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This! Even just comparing USB-A 1.0 to what it replaced, it's hard to imagine a reversible plug like USB-C having been feasible/cost-effective to produce in the

This! Even just comparing USB-A 1.0 to what it replaced, it's hard to imagine a reversible plug like USB-C having been feasible/cost-effective to produce in the mid 90s. The PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports had pins of a similar size and spacing, but it was hard to orient the circular connectors. You could get the connector lined up and twist gently until the pins found their holes, but eventually you would bend a pin. I remember being very impressed at the way USB solved the issue of bent pins, but wondering why they didn't just key the connector like a Zip disk (which had beveled edges along the top of the disk, and wouldn't go into the drive upside-down). Meanwhile we were connecting printers, scanners, and other peripherals using a 25-pin parallel (or sometimes SCSI) plug. Granted, the DB-25 was already pretty old at that point, but I have to imagine a 24-pin reversible USB plug would have been close to that size if it had been developed in the 90s.

mortenjorck 6y ago
This thread makes a convincing case for why the original USB connector couldn’t be reversible, but there’s a parallel question I’ve never seen addressed: Why couldn’t it have been asymmetrical? The physical design of FireWire was one of its many advantages, in that you could instantly tell, visually and by touch, which side was up by the beveled corners on one side of the plug. I’m guessing the answer here was again cost, that manufacturing an interconnect with two 90-degree angles and four 45-degree angles was more expensive than one with four 90-degree angles, but I’ve never seen any confirmation of this.
- dingaling 6y ago
  > This thread makes a convincing case for why the original USB connector couldn’t be reversible The sole reason as stated by Ajay Bhatt, the project lead at Intel, was cost. They wanted to encourage mass adoption of USB and every cent saved helped in that initiative. The compromise for UX was to make the connector rectangular rather than circular, so that there was a 50% chance of getting it correctly orientated on first try.
- drewzero1 6y ago
  FireWire 400 was a great connector! I resisted using FW for the longest time mostly because the cables were more expensive and less common than USB. Once most of my computers had it it started to make more sense for faster file transfers and external drives. They were so much easier to plug in without looking than USB, but the FW800 and mini connector went to a more rectangular shape and somewhat lost that advantage. I never ended up getting a camera or anything else that supported FW, but USB always seemed to work well enough for my (relatively light) use case.

mortenjorck 6y ago

This thread makes a convincing case for why the original USB connector couldn’t be reversible, but there’s a parallel question I’ve never seen addressed: Why couldn’t it have been asymmetrical? The physical design of FireWire was one of its many advantages, in that you could instantly tell, visually and by touch, which side was up by the beveled corners on one side of the plug. I’m guessing the answer here was again cost, that manufacturing an interconnect with two 90-degree angles and four 45-degree angles was more expensive than one with four 90-degree angles, but I’ve never seen any confirmation of this.

dingaling 6y ago
> This thread makes a convincing case for why the original USB connector couldn’t be reversible The sole reason as stated by Ajay Bhatt, the project lead at Intel, was cost. They wanted to encourage mass adoption of USB and every cent saved helped in that initiative. The compromise for UX was to make the connector rectangular rather than circular, so that there was a 50% chance of getting it correctly orientated on first try.
drewzero1 6y ago
FireWire 400 was a great connector! I resisted using FW for the longest time mostly because the cables were more expensive and less common than USB. Once most of my computers had it it started to make more sense for faster file transfers and external drives. They were so much easier to plug in without looking than USB, but the FW800 and mini connector went to a more rectangular shape and somewhat lost that advantage. I never ended up getting a camera or anything else that supported FW, but USB always seemed to work well enough for my (relatively light) use case.