USB problem/Thunderbolt on Mac mini M4

Lose the extra cabling and adapters at the mouse and keyboard port. The USB keyboard and mouse don't require anything but a simple USB-A to USB-C adapter to connect to the ports on the back of the Mac mini. They are simple and affordable @ about $10 a pair on Amazon.

They look like this:

In fact, if your keyboard has USB pass-through you only need a single connection to the Mac mini. You can daisy chain your mouse through the keyboard. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here.

The rear-panel USB-C ports on the M4 Mac mini are multi-purpose ports that support

• Traditional USB (I'm guessing at up to 10 Gb/s)
• USB4 (up to 40 Gb/s)
• DisplayPort
• Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40 Gb/s)
• [M4 Pro chip models only] Thunderbolt 5 (up to 120 Gb/s)

They adapt to whatever is plugged into them.

The front-panel USB-C ports on the M4 Mac mini are single-purpose ports that support

• Traditional USB (up to 10 Gb/s)

You can think of the USB-C connector as being like the concept of a "Swiss Army knife", and the things that live on it as being like the "blades". Some Swiss Army knives have more blades than others; and some USB-C ports offer support for more types of things than others.

You're welcome.

To put it simply, the Thunderbolt ports on the Mac are a combination of high-speed data connection and power delivery, and it also carries compatibility with USB protocols. You can therefore use it to connect simple, less expensive USB devices to your Mac and the more expensive Thunderbolt specified storage, monitors, hubs and other devices. Killing two birds with one stone, as it were. That's why in descriptions, the ports are often labeled as Thunderbolt/USB. I agree that marketing could be better.

Sounds like the problem is how well USB-C sockets hold plugged-in cables, in general – rather than anything to do with Thunderbolt. I believe in this regards, the Lightning connector was a bit better than USB-C – even though the Lightning connector is not nearly as capable as USB-C.