Reminder that #USB is, and always was, a bad design; as usual for Intel. We had #Firewire, a true bus, and not the worst option of many, polling, like USB. We could have had everything USB-C offers now -- reversible plugs, power-negotiation, multi-protocol -- with Firewire decades ago if USB hadn't taken over. Firewire even had Ethernet-over-Firewire, at 400MBps, fifteen years before Thunderbolt would do the same.
Firewire didn't need a different plug for the computer-side and for the device-side (USB-A & USB-B) because it was a true bus. You could hook any two devices together via a normal Firewire cable and you'd get instant two-way communication. This is how the PS2 did link-play. USB pushed the workload on to the computer. USB-C solves the "who is the host and who is the client?" problem by putting a tiny *computer* into the cable, that's how insane USB has become.
Firewire has been gone so long now that most #Apple #Mac users probably don't even know that you could plug a Mac into another computer via Firewire, power it on holding T and the internal disk drive would appear *as an external HDD* to the other computer.
