vanilla inserters first grab from the near side and if there are no more items then also from the far side. thus it is not as important as the drop position where inserters drop only to the far side (vanilla default) or only to the near side (if changed by a mod).
but for selection of drop location, having only a choice of "far or near" is not always good enough :-(
in addition to "far and near", there also should be selections for "left or right", or even better yet a choice of all combinations like "near left" or "far right". I'm used to those selections since i had to use bobs while this mod had no proper version for the factorio version that i was using.
the selection of the quadrant or even a more specific location is not only important to drop items on one side of a belt or the other, but it can also be used to change the timing of inserters: in contrast to the rotation, extension/contraction of inserters is much slower and thus it is beneficial when the exact drop position can be adjusted so that no or as little as possible extension/contraction of inserters is needed when using different rotations than exact 90/180/270 degrees.
another application for more drop locations is to avoid that an inserter picks up unwanted items, eg when picking up items from the incoming (left) near side of a horizontal belt and dropping them to the outgoing (right) far side of the same tile: as long as the belt moves, the item will have left the tile from its far right position until the inserter can grab it again.
ps: and an optional tech to increase max range from 2 to 3 wouldn't be bad either :-)
