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.
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:
I agree with most of your post, but micro B is a step too far. That fucking plug was always inserted with the following procedure:
Always, always, always.
D