I bought a cheap printer from walmart last year and was absolutely miffed that it didnt come with a cord. No, I am not connecting you to my wifi and installing your software on my computer! Had to buy a printer cord on amazon that ended up costing as much as the printer itself...
Interesting. I haven't seen a printer without a type-b port since like the 90's or early 00's? And those were pretty consistently the parallel printer ports from what I remember.
Well to be fair this was literally the first printer I've ever bought, at 31. It advertised on the box that it could connect by wifi or by cord, so I expected it to come with all accessories needed for that.
Sounds like the real problem here was spending way too much money on a USB cable that you could have gotten for less than a buck from literally any other place.
At this point i would feel safer having the printer on the network with my devices' network stacks between it and the OS than I would granting a printer direct access like that.