Normal USB A ports have that little notch on the inside too. For all the years I've lived on this planet I've never broken a USB port. USB C is perfectly fine.

The worst part of lightning is how flimsy it feels once it's been worn in.

Plus having the connectors inside with something to line it up seems like a battle hardened design choice now. Unless you're an idiot, you're not gonna break anything.

Fwiw I broke I think more then 10 micro usb cables / ports throughout the time when they were everywhere, it was kind of prone to breaking. Never managed to break a regular usb, mini usb or usb c though. So I don't think proneness to breaking is inherent to this design, but the opposite isn't true either.

micro usb should be more durable than mini usb: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/21/facebook-paid-billi...

it would be sad if they didn't try to improve on previous designs

I have broken at least two female USB-A ports, with a cable pulled sideways tearing the inside tab off. Luckily, this always was on motherboards that had a spare one just next to it.

In later revisions (at least starting with micro USB, perhaps mini as well), the cable was explicitly designed to be the part prone to breakage, as it's easier to replace.

I wholeheartedly agree. Lightning, as a connecor, is really superior to USB-C : solid, stable, simple and compact.

Too bad Apple didn't wanted to give this one to the USB consortium and we'll now be stuck with USB-C (and don't get me wrong : as much as i love the lightning connector, I vastly prefer a standard connector for everything, so USB-C it'll be).

I also prefer Lightning. The central pin of USB-C being in the device's port rather than the charger seems like a bad idea to me. Lightning is the opposite.

I think it helps against dust getting stuck inside though.

Also, more ports on USB-C make for better "alternate mode" functionality, where some data lanes are re-purposed (with an analog mux) for another use, like displayport, or audio DAC.

So do I, I would have preferred Lightning ports over USB-C. Unfortunately, Apple never plays nice and always has restrictive and money-making standards, so I guess they never tried to pitch it to the USB standards body.

USB-C is a very capable plug system, so I'll be happy if everything converges on this one instead.

I dunno, I seem to go through Lightning charging cables like water, whereas I've never replaced a USB-C charging cable. That may have less to do with the intrinsic properties of the design so much as Apple's unwillingness to build stable cables, but usually I have two or three cables (at home, at the office) which are usually whatever's cheapest, so it seems like it must be intrinsic to the market's ability to produce durable third party cables.

Is it because you move your phone while it's charging a lot more than you move your laptop?

I'm sure mechanical engineers calculated the entry, insertion distance and wiggle room, so that you can't apply any relevant force onto the notch inside.

Wish they had done the same with Micro-USB, those get real flaky after a while.

They always do. These things have mechanical physical standards as well as the electronic/software side.

Micro-USB requires more force because of its 2 teeth underneath, that's made to latch onto the socket. That was a mistake. In comparison, Mini-USB don't have this problem and slides straight similarly to USB-C in that sense.

A lot of thought process goes into this mechanical interaction of male/female plug/sockets.

I design/3d printed a lot of mechanical stuff for hobby for some years now. You can't make stuff work without calculating these tolerances. I am sure professionals who work on standards know/do better than me.