The crazy part is that "reversible USB" was already a solved problem, by clever engineering of the A plug.
Never mind that on its face, the C plug is a nice reversible plug. But then someone noticed all those contact points on one side that went to waste half the time, and thought they could cram even more signals down the wire, and here we are...
> thought they could cram even more signals down the wire, and here we are...
How so? I'd say 95% of the complication would still exist if you only used the contact points on one side. You would eliminate 3.2 speeds (would anyone notice?), the video+data mode would be slightly different and slightly simpler... and not much else would change.
Never mind that on its face, the C plug is a nice reversible plug. But then someone noticed all those contact points on one side that went to waste half the time, and thought they could cram even more signals down the wire, and here we are...