Not that I don't love usb-c ubiquity (thanks EU). It rwally grinds my.gears that my new kindle was syill micro-usb. Anyway, for those cases I have a couple of cheap adapters that do lightning/usb-c/micro/mini that I got free as marketing promos. Pretty handy to keep in your bag, especially for taking pity on people with dead iphones.
Apple's done this for a long time. They wait for something to be ready before launching it. They're rumored to be working on removing the notch, and foldable phones don't have enough consumer interest, yet.
On hardware: Apple’s flagship phones are parity or better on most aspects of hardware. The SOC, camera module, material construction, screen color accuracy, and speaker quality meet or exceed just about everyone. I didn’t realize this was still an open question for people.