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Way back when, when apple was apparently using a bunch of proprietary connectors, it certainly was a step in the right direction for them to use usb.

Here were the connectors/protocols:

Apple Data Bus: There was no equivalent on the PC, on Apple since the 80s. It allowed daisy-chaining of serial devices with no configuration. USB was the first mass-market device to do this AFAIK.

AppleTalk was Apple's zero-configuration networking introduced in 1984. Literally, plugging several Macs into each other created a functioning network. There was no PC equivalent, and still really isn't. Apple has tried to replace this with Ethernet plus Bonjour networking utilities.

SCSI: Industry standard for high-speed devices.

So you see, there was a reason for holding onto these proprietary connectors for so long. What would you have proposed for Apple instead of ADB? Good old RS-232 serial with all its problems and manual configuration? That was the PC equivalent. At the time Apple used AppleTalk, would you have preferred Token Ring or the Novell fun? What a PITA.