Interesting. To be honest I've never used the crop tool! and I've been using PS since v3.0. I am not sure I'd noticed it even
I've always just cropped to selection (Image -> Crop).
When needing fine detail of selecting exact pixels to crop to I first put Guides in place around the image while zoomed in at 300% or whatever, then select the square of the area to crop and then Image -> Crop. If needed I rotate the canvas first.