I know things have become much more complicated, but still remember fondly the good intentions of the original USB spec, which, for instances, forbade any extension cables (ignored, as expected, by many), with the reasoning that users should expect that if a cable connects, it should just work. Longer cables would need to be electrically "better", and extensions would eventually cause issues with electrical paths that were too long.

People still remembered the "black art" involved with, e.g., SCSI cables, where long chains would often had issues, and wanted to avoid that.