An oral history of USB, the port that changed everything

> We had looked at [making the plug reversible], but the whole goal here was to make it very inexpensive, and at that point, we were trying to solve all the USB problems with two wires. At that point, if you added wires to make things flippable, you have to add wires, and you also have to add a lot of silicon. Wires and pins cost real money, so we decided to keep it as cheap as possible... In hindsight, a flippable connector would have been better.