idk if i agree with this. apple replaced the 30-pin connector w/ lightning in 2012, when the only other mainstream option would have been micro-usb cables which sucked ass then and suck ass now. lightning was great at the time not just because it was smaller than the 30-pin but also it was symmetrical compared to micro-usb

the first usb-c compatible smartphones didn’t start arriving until like 3 years after that, by which point there were already hundreds of millions of lightning-compatible devices and an entire ecosystem existing in the wild.

standards are great. pissing off your consumers again only a few years after a major transition, maybe not so much. but now after 11 years of lightning and 5+ years of usb-c being commonplace the bandaid is a lot easier to rip off