USB-C puts the compliant side (springs) in the plug. This is the part that fatigues and wears out. Lightning puts it in the socket. This means that Lightning will wear out after sufficient connection cycles, and you need to repair your device; with USB-C you can wear out a cable and just replace it, the device will be fine.

Additionally, Lightning plug connectors have a higher tendency to corrode. This is, I believe because the exposed mating surface on the plug end easily gathers debris (in particular e.g. oils and grease), and that can cause poor contact which can result in oxidation due to heating and electrolytic effects. USB-C does not have this problem, as none of the mating surfaces are exposed to being touched. The debris that tends to collect inside USB-C ports is usually solid fluff, not liquids.

And Lightning is just a terrible standard anyway. iPhones to this day use compressed video over USB2 for their "HDMI" output dongles (which actually have an Ax class CPU in them just to decode the video) because Apple were too short-sighted in their design to allow for enough expandability to support uncompressed digital video properly.

We don't really know that -- USB-C hasn't been out long enough. I can tell you that for durability I hate lightning, because it always seems to have connection problems after a while and the plug itself seems overly complex for what it does. I can't recall ever having any such connection problems with micro USB or USB A for example.

In general it's easy to see also that the lightning connector itself is far more exposed to the environment than any of the USB connectors which are largely enclosed.

This is weird. My experience has always been the opposite. I’ve broken lots of usb-c cables with the metal bit coming loose. Lightening hardly ever. Any connection problems are usually pocket lint in the hole and fixed with a paper clip.

Same here, I have had lots of broken Lightning Cables, but never the connector. While I have had lots of USB-C connector issues.

Sounds like both tech could be improved?

Get a toothpick an scrape out the socket.

Lovely! What a solid design.

This is not about what connector is better. It is about everyone using the same connector. I believe if Apple allowed others to use their connector for free, they could "beat" USBs and become the only existing standard.

The lightning connector only supports usb 2.0 so even apple binned it on the iPads now.

The lightning connector is perfectly capable of supporting USB3.0, ( and they did at one point in time ), but it just doesn't make sense when iPad's ecosystem are more general purpose and requires interaction with USB-C, from display port to memory sticks.

If we're only allowed to use one connector, it had better be the "better one".

If the better one is expensive (e.g. the creator asks for license fees), we should choose the cheaper one. Just like the VHS has beaten the Betamax.

I'd rather pay for the nice one to be honest. So I guess we can't just have one connector.

We have one type of electric sockets (at least within each country). But there certainly can exist better kinds of sockets than those used in your our my country. But I am glad that we all have same sockets in our houses, even though they are not perfect.

Fair enough. :)

The parent comment asked:

>What's Apple reasoning for not abandoning Lightning for USB-C on their phones?

I would think that "what connector is better" definitely plays an important part in Apple's reasoning.

It can be argued that lightning is slightly better, sure. But billions of people use USB-C daily, and even half of Apples product line only has them instead of lightning, so not sure if the difference is that meaningful.

I don’t own a single usbc device, I have lightning on my phone, and tons of microusb-usbA devices/cables

“Billions” sounds like a HN bubble statement.

6 billion smartphone subscriptions worldwide (according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartph...), Android is about 70% (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide), and has been predominantly USB C for the past 5 years or so (eg Samsung S7, released in 2016, was their first phone with USB-C afaics). I don't think it's that far fetched.

According to Wikipedia the S7 was first released 2016-03-11. The Oneplus 2 was released on 2015-07-28 which was one the first with a USB-C port.

One of the big reasons for me getting the OP2 was the port and I'm still using it (with LineageOS). I'm sure I would have upgraded long ago if it didn't have a USB-C port as that's what I've standardised on for all my portable electronics.

Same applies in reverse.

I don't own a single lightning device, but everything (minus older devices) has usb-c. Even rechargeable battery inside a flashlight.

I think that’s where we are headed though. I used to have only microusb, but everything I bought in the past year has had usb-c.

So you cite a sample of N=1 and then claim than anything else must be from within a bubble? Interesting.

I’m at a hotel breakfast, so far this morning I’ve seen half a dozen usb-a sockets and not a single usb-c socket.

Majority of electronic devices are older than usb-c standard, even the electric screwdriver I bought two months ago was micro-usb, as is the shaver I used this morning. At work about half the low power devices are PoE or Micro-USB.

Aside from a few laptops USB-C is still rare.

That's still just anecdote. I have USB-C for one pair of headphones, two pairs of earbuds, a bedside light/charger, and of course my phone. But I don't assume my experience is universal. I look at data, as should you, and it does seem that there are indeed billions of devices out there using USB-C.

https://epsnews.com/2017/12/28/usb-type-c-adoption-keeps-gro...

Looks like phones alone account for ~3B in a single year, so no, it's not just laptops. Even if you exclude those, the "consumer electronics" segment looks like it'll go over 1B/year pretty soon. Get out of your bubble.

US bubble.

Not according to real data.

https://www.marketresearchblog.org/2021/09/22/usb-type-c-mar...

That seems to show that the US is a plurality, but not a majority, of USB-C shipments.

>USB-C more vulnerable to e.g. dust

A trouble with lightning is the dust etc. gets stuck in the phone socket - I've had to replace two at like £50 a go. Getting a new cable is often easier.

A paper clip or a cocktail stick is enough to clean a Lightning port with dust in it. No need to change anything.

You're best off with something that isn't conductive to avoid shorting any of the pins. I'd stay away from paper clips. Toothpicks also work well.

I have had similar issues in the past, but instead of having to have a port repaired, when I brought my iPhone to the Apple Store, they simply cleaned out the dust from the port with a SIM removal tool and sent me on my way.

This applies in theory but I see things happen differently in real life. I have got macbook 2016 usb c cable and that dust problem etc has never happened to me. And my android cable are pretty robust too. But the funny thing is I always need to put spring so that join don't gets damaged in iphone charger.

> The male lightning connector is a single flat piece; the female connector is a hole with the contacts on the top + bottom of the port.

Which means that the part which wears over time (the springs) is on the port instead of the cable.

On USB-C, the springs are all in the cable; the port is a single flat piece (the tab in the middle) surrounded by a metallic shield.

They are both physically robust and very reliable, to the point where I don’t think this is a valid excuse. We’ve come a long way since the early days of mobile phones.

It does not match my experience. My lightning connectors wear off - it is only a matter of time. It has never ever happened to any on my USB-C cables.