That only works if

1. The cable has a logo.

2. You can see the logo.

3. The device and cable both conform to the standard.

4. The port is not vertical.

5. The device you are plugging in is not on it's side or upside down.

6. The user is sober and of a clear, calm mind.

The cable that came with my Moto G improves on this by making the top, logo side slightly concave and the other side slightly convex. You can literally feel which way up you've got the plug.

We did that on the cables for the Palm webOS devices too -- the top side all had a silver depression for easy finger feel.

And I still preferentially use my Palm Pre cables (back in the day, I dremmeled down the plastic housing of another usb-micro I had so it would fit in the touchstone, since I never unplugged that one, and could use the palm-pre one for other uses).

That only helps when you know the cable beforehand. The cable that came with my Motorola RAZR i cable has the high relief on one side of the connector, while the one from my Nexus 7 has it on the other side.

The USB ports on my computers aren't all oriented the same way (even on the same computer / motherboard), some USB peripherals are labeled on the "right" side some on the wrong. Sometimes even when you have it oriented the correct way, it doesn't always go in because you have it slightly cockeyed. Sometimes its dark and you can't see which way is up.

There are many reasons why single-sided (but not obviously sided) connections are hard to plug in and most of them don't have to do with the user being stupid.

Unfortunately, the original USB spec recommended connectors with spin-1/2 rotational symmetry, so you sometimes have to rotate the plug more than 360 degrees to make it fit in the port.

Eyes should not be mandatory to operate a USB cable. I can think of no other consumer cable that requires me to stare at it while I plug it in.

Clearly you have not attempted to use an S-Video cable. :)

Eh, I cut my teeth on old Apple serial ports. Same mini-DIN8 cable. Feel for the flat part and jam it in. I've lost surprisingly few pins with that strategy.

True, but sometimes it is not easily visible, or you want to plug it in without looking at it.

Agreed. I manage to do it in the dark every night plugging in my cell phone. Really...

We are all complete oafs.

My tablet port faces one direction, my phone the other... it is not that easy... I've also got cables that aren't clearly labelled on the micro side... When you're half asleep at the end of the day, it's not that great... I want to know why it took so long to come up with a reversible plug.