Honestly, I didn’t really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.
I believe that the reason that the smaller USB variants showed up was because some devices were just too small to physically accommodate a USB-A plug. Think MP3 players and later – very importantly – smartphones.
For the vast majority of consumer electronics, USB-A is fine. But for things that are as thin as possible, usually to fit into a pocket, it starts to bump up against limits.
That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward “is this the right way?” thing is way worse than with USB-A, it’s not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I would’ve been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead.
Mini-USB put the tensioners – the bit that wears out over time, is the bottleneck on the lifetime of the thing – on the (expensive) device rather than the (cheap) cable.
Like, I think that there was a legitimate reason to fix that one way or another.
I believe that the reason that the smaller USB variants showed up was because some devices were just too small to physically accommodate a USB-A plug. Think MP3 players and later – very importantly – smartphones.
For the vast majority of consumer electronics, USB-A is fine. But for things that are as thin as possible, usually to fit into a pocket, it starts to bump up against limits.
Mini-USB put the tensioners – the bit that wears out over time, is the bottleneck on the lifetime of the thing – on the (expensive) device rather than the (cheap) cable.
Like, I think that there was a legitimate reason to fix that one way or another.