This cable is 15 years old, and shipped as an “extension cable” for a specific keyboard. To be fair, it wasn’t designed to charge your phone in 2020.
USB extensions are not compliant with the USB 2.0 spec and were not permitted to be shipped with a USB certified product in 2005.
The USB specification designates the maximum cable length as 5 meters (approx. 16 feet), and states that the cable cannot be extended, and one cable cannot be connected directly to another in order to achieve a longer distance. No active or passive cable extender or similar unit is allowed by the standard.
The official position was that every "extension" had to be made by a USB Hub, which was bulky and expensive at the time. Absolutely zero USB extension cables were being certified in the USB 2.0 days.
So, this is a really clever compromise, which allows the device cable (with the notch) to be used with any USB compliant A-type host port. But also ship a cable, which is technically not a USB extension cable, in a spec-compliant way.
Apple was spending a lot of resources advocating for updated USB standards in the 2000s, which eventually led to the creation of the USB-C standard used today. It would have looked really bad for them to ship a product which purposefully undermined the standards body.
TLDR; If you want to put the "USB" name or logo on your box, you have to follow the rules set by the USB standards committee. One of those rules was no USB extension cables. They believed USB hubs were superior.
This is technically not a USB extension cable. So, the logo can go on the box :)
Edit: Thanks for the gold, kind stranger! I decided to add a small tidbit to this since at least one other person enjoyed this bit of trivia.
Many of these standards bodies (like USB) enforces their rules through the trademark system. They have legal ownership of the logo and name, and can technically sue you if you use it without their permission. So, they create a license that says "You can use our logo and name if you do these things".
WrenchHeadFox on January 22nd, 2020 at 01:59 UTC »
Agree this is asshole design, but I've forced a regular USB cable in there successfully.
EarthIsInOuterSpace on January 22nd, 2020 at 02:52 UTC »
Dremel
dgamr on January 22nd, 2020 at 08:19 UTC »
This cable is 15 years old, and shipped as an “extension cable” for a specific keyboard. To be fair, it wasn’t designed to charge your phone in 2020.
USB extensions are not compliant with the USB 2.0 spec and were not permitted to be shipped with a USB certified product in 2005.
The official position was that every "extension" had to be made by a USB Hub, which was bulky and expensive at the time. Absolutely zero USB extension cables were being certified in the USB 2.0 days.
You can read more about that here: https://www.ieci.com.au/applications/wp-usb-extender.pdf (page 5)
So, this is a really clever compromise, which allows the device cable (with the notch) to be used with any USB compliant A-type host port. But also ship a cable, which is technically not a USB extension cable, in a spec-compliant way.
Apple was spending a lot of resources advocating for updated USB standards in the 2000s, which eventually led to the creation of the USB-C standard used today. It would have looked really bad for them to ship a product which purposefully undermined the standards body.
TLDR; If you want to put the "USB" name or logo on your box, you have to follow the rules set by the USB standards committee. One of those rules was no USB extension cables. They believed USB hubs were superior.
This is technically not a USB extension cable. So, the logo can go on the box :)
Edit: Thanks for the gold, kind stranger! I decided to add a small tidbit to this since at least one other person enjoyed this bit of trivia.
Many of these standards bodies (like USB) enforces their rules through the trademark system. They have legal ownership of the logo and name, and can technically sue you if you use it without their permission. So, they create a license that says "You can use our logo and name if you do these things".
Sure enough, their requirement for the use of their logo is USB-IF compliance testing -- https://www.usb.org/logo-license