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USB inventor explains why the connector was not designed to be reversible (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 1 year ago by ooli to c/technology

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[–] Siegfried 208 points 1 year ago (33 children)

TL;DR: its cheaper that way,

And i value that decision

[–] MeanEYE 98 points 1 year ago (26 children)

I can bet you it's incompetence. They failed upwards. Sure, protocol is great and universal, but connector is atrocious and it has nothing to do with cost. Few points in favor of this hypothesis:

Plastic inside of the connector was initially black. Why chose hard to see color? Go with something easier to see;
Connector is perfectly rectangular and only distinguishing feature they made hard to see. Don't make ti symmetrical if it's not reversible, basic design principle;
Connector is perfectly rectangular making it difficult to insert. There's a reason why most connectors have rounded corners, they are self-correcting, even TypeC does this;
They made various different connector types but pushed for the only one with these issues. No one ever had doubts how type B or mini B or micro B go in.

[–] sachabe 44 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Also a male USB 2 plug fits perfectly into a RJ45 slot :-/ In my days of tech support, I've seen multiple people plugging their USB printer cable into the network slot of their computer and it's a perfect fit so they were always convinced they didn't do anything wrong... That's clearly a design flaw while all other connectors have distinct sizes.

[–] MeanEYE 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never heard of people plugging USB into LAN, but now that you mention it they are the same size. Luckily all the contacts are shielded.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I've done it myself when feeling the back of a pc and trying to get away without looking. I've been doing IT support since high school.

[–] PlutoniumAcid 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Way back before USB, joysticks had a DIN-25 connector that was identical to the ~~MIDI~~ network connector.

I blindly plugged my brand new MS Force Feedback joystick into the ~~MIDI~~ network port behind my miditower (yes I'm that old) and watched the magic smoke rise out of the joystick. That was not a good day to learn about plugs. The network carries 50 volts or something. Stick wasn't happy.

edit: corrections! Here's a photo of the network card: https://i.imgur.com/fBJixkM.png

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Strange. I always thought they were the exact same port. Because most of the time you would need a sound card to plug in a joystick. And nowadays I can't use my MS Force Feedback because all the USB adaptors don't implement all of the MIDI stuff the joystick needs to run the force feedback.

[–] PlutoniumAcid 5 points 1 year ago

Oh you are right, I misremembered: what actually happened was that I was indeed going for the MIDI port of my SoundBlaster card but found a matching socket in my networrk card!

I will update my comment to correct this.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My girlfriend works in IT at a school so I asked if she's encountered this too. She said "all the time, they're right next to each other" she also added that a lot of people put their thin charging cables into the headphone jack breaking their laptops. And that for some of them they "fit better" in that jack than the one it's meant to go in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You mean USB Type-B, right?

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