Which boils down to: people want to be able to plug something in without thorough inspection.
An easy, cheap solution they could have popularized from the start would be to print something like an arrow on both the port and plug to line up visually.
Apparently manufacturers are only supposed to put the logo on the top. But since a lot of companies didn't print the logo, or only embossed the logo so you could barely see it, or put the ports on the parent device sideways, this was never much help.
Combine that with the fact that they never actually told anyone this, and it was basically useless.
Yeah, I don't think the complaints stem from the connector not being reversible but what you described in the last paragraph.
Yep. It's not that it isn't reversible, it's that it's non-reversible contacts inside a symmetrical connector.
Which boils down to: people want to be able to plug something in without thorough inspection.
An easy, cheap solution they could have popularized from the start would be to print something like an arrow on both the port and plug to line up visually.
Apparently manufacturers are only supposed to put the logo on the top. But since a lot of companies didn't print the logo, or only embossed the logo so you could barely see it, or put the ports on the parent device sideways, this was never much help.
Combine that with the fact that they never actually told anyone this, and it was basically useless.