After 18 years of confusion: Here’s why we plug in USB in the wrong way every time

No matter where you live and whoever you are, you must have shared the frustration with most of Earth’s population whenever you’re trying to connect a USB device or flash drive in the past decade. This weird phenomenon isn’t something that has some super natural cause, but instead it’s the design that gives you a 50/50 chance of getting your USB plugged in right for the first time.

However, one can’t help but think of ways that could’ve been done to prevent that. Colored arrows, plastic parts sticking out or even a different socket shape would have worked in informing the user of the orientation he has to pay attention to. Apparently, the reason why none of that was implemented was simply “cost”.

“The biggest mess with USB was the connector was not flippable,” says Ajay Bhatt, USB Developer, in an interview with Design News, “Even today when you look at USB, if we had made it flippable it would have been a lot easier.”

“If you have a lot of cost up front for an unproven technology it might not take off…. In hindsight you can say it could have been better, but compared to where we were with serial ports and parallel ports…. USB was significantly better.”

It wasn’t until 2014 that the USB 3.1 Type-C connector was created, making the port reversible and solving the 18-plus years of agony. Now you can connect USB without worrying about anything, well except for connecting it to an HDMI port by mistake perhaps.

Type-C is being widely used by new devices from Smartphones, laptops, to even some new ear phones. With the fastest transfer speeds and highest power yet of any USB standard, we’re pretty happy with the new connector finally taking off. So long, impossible-to-plug-at-first-time USB cables!

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