I don't think the drive was intended to be a desktop peripheral, so cable length wasn't considered. It may have had some intended role as a portable drive, like something you'd toss in your computer bag, where compactness and no-cable-to-lose / no-brick-to-forget is a plus. One would hope you'd use it once to load in all your floppies (either to the computer, or to burn them to disc, or to a flash drive) and then it goes into the "computer accessories misc" drawer in your office, never to see the light again.
I've seen a lot of people with that drawer in their office. Several times I've been asked to look at that while I was there doing a delivery-and-setup, and found something like 15 USB A/B cables, 3 USB A/miniB cables, 9 ethernet jumpers, 5 unidentifiable power bricks with no associated accessories in the drawer, a weird proprietary USB cable with no matching accessory present, 3 AC cords, and a handful of paperwork and post-it notes. "I think we can just throw most of that away..." It's like the "junk drawer" in most kitchens. (who is ever really going to use 10,000 twist ties?)
