I wish Apple never (got forced to) drop the lightning port. USB-C is vastly inferior in terms of durability due to its dumb design with a tiny PCB that sticks out right in the middle and an hermaphrodite plug that goes around it while still being inside the port.
From my experience USB-C is more durable. It has all the wearable springy parts in the cable, so replacing the cable every couple of years keeps it working like new. With Lightning the phone connector has spring-loaded contacts and retention clips that are guaranteed to wear out, and when they do you have to take apart the device and in some cases do micro-soldering to replace the connector.
USB-C has a tiny fragile 0.7 mm thick PCB levitating mid-air right in the middle of the port, just attached to one end (enabling it to irreparably bend in any direction if anything pushes it). This is in my experience way more fragile than the internal tried-and-true spring fingers.
Lightning does seem like the smarter mechanical design. Less to break on the phone side. Smaller overall. It's a shame it didn't become the general usb standard but I guess that's apple keeping it proprietary?
Also less likely to break on the plug side because it's a solid block rather than an extruded shape. Apple is infamous for its flimsy cables, but they always broke at the start of the cable (right after the end of the solid plastic thing), they never broke at the connector level. USB-C breaks on the connector, the plug, and the start of the cable.
I'm not entirely sure why it happened… Maybe Apple thought that they could keep their own proprietary plug forever and that the EU was bluffing about forcing everyone to use USB-C? Or maybe they are happy like everyone to switch to a fragile connector type that will shorten the lifespan of iPhones.
I doubt they're happy about it. With its smaller receptacle dimensions they could make a thinner phone or use the saved volume for a bigger battery than competitors.
I wonder what the EU will do when they eventually drop connectors entirely in favor of wireless charging.
In the theory that sounds plausible to me but (1) I've never actually experienced such a break (so "vastly inferior" can't be right) and (2) USB-C has clearly won, so it's water under the bridge.
