Apple did not ship it that way because there was a "test mode" in some of the chips of that day. If you attempted to access addresses that were not present on the chips, it went into test mode and cycled through all its addresses, never to return.
If my recollection is correct, updated memory modules had a one-chip add-on that made sure the pattern than invoked test mode would get intercepted, not passed to the chips (and keeping them from entering test mode and becoming useless).
I bought and still have four HUGE modules for (I think) the IIfx that have literally four rows of chips each. I am not sure whether they have the "fix" or whether they were built with chips that did not do test mode. They are so big will only fit in a case the size of a Mac II or IIfx, with its enormous amount of headroom over the memory modules.