Not to mention they were integrated into the machine itself - picture 1-4 floppy disks fitting snuggly inside your PC right where they're supposed to go and where nothing else even could go, versus a handful of usb sticks of various shapes and sizes sticking out haphazardly like porcupine needles, some even pushing each other over because they're too thick, or connected by a jungle of wires, either way hooked up to a generic universal bus port that could be used for literally anything else and has no specific semantic meaning to your PC's software.