It broke approximately 2018, and it works for most people. When it doesn't work, "why" it doesn't work is unclear, but it's very consistent for those of us to whom it happens.
I tracked it to a single OS update because it was one of the last iterations that still had removable SSDs. I could swap the drives and the USB failure moved with the OS.
It's almost certainly an overly zealous macOS USB HID driver. macOS will do very strange things if the HID descriptor and the USB report don't correspond exactly and it will do those weird things silently. People have had to work around strange macOS HID handling for quite a while now.
I tracked it to a single OS update because it was one of the last iterations that still had removable SSDs. I could swap the drives and the USB failure moved with the OS.
It's almost certainly an overly zealous macOS USB HID driver. macOS will do very strange things if the HID descriptor and the USB report don't correspond exactly and it will do those weird things silently. People have had to work around strange macOS HID handling for quite a while now.