Re: You need to remember...
I don't think so, USB was designed to replace things like Centronics (IEEE 1284), RS-232 and RS-432 type connectors that were in use at the time.
USB was meant to be as fast as the fastest of those, smaller than the smallest and a standard size as well as more robust so that is could be regularly connected and disconnected without bending or breaking pins.
In addition to that, USB devices were all supposed to be hot-pluggable (not recommended for some devices using the previous standards) and it made it standard to put sockets on machines and peripherals so that all cables were plugs. In the olden days there was no standard, so every IT person in the land had to have a drawer full of M-M and F-F adapters for emergencies.
You youngsters don't know the half of it :-)
Now you basically have USB as A-A or A-B and a length.
Back then an RS-232 could be 9-9 pin, 24-24 pin, 9-24 pin and then the gender connectors on top of that - 10 combinations before you even get to length. And then on top of that, not all pins had to be connected or even in the same order, so you had to have all of those combinations along with further ones for things like pass-through and crossover.
Some places I worked at had entire stock rooms full of the various cable combinations and nothing else.
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