Couldn't agree more. I don't understand why the HN crowd is so supportive of government telling people what to do, as evidenced by your rapid downvotes. I don't use an iPhone but I'm disappointed Apple caved.
Of course, there's still fragmentation among different continents/countries, but that was inevitable given the time periods these things were standardised. It's unfortunate that the world didn't decide on one standard, but at least almost all countries are internally consistent. There's no need to make the same mistake with USB.