> Apple was an exception and this feels different to me.
They were an exception because they already had the bestselling smartphone at the time they switched away from the 30-pin connector. Apple could have put a DC barrel-jack as the main power connector and the market would have no choice but to adopt it. They seized the opportunity to create a functionally-identical protocol to USB and encumber it with a licensed connector for personal gain. Regardless of how you feel about the connectors at the time, this was not a serious alternative to USB.
> Everybody and everything is standardizing on USB-C.
Yeah, I wonder which company was known/hated for pushing USB-C early-on as a connection standard yet not fully adopting it themselves.
> If you don’t see any potential downsides you aren’t looking hard enough.
No, if you don't see the problem with the status-quo then you're being blinded by baseless loyalty.
From a regulatory perspective, the situation is this; public utilities cannot converge on a serial specification as long as the iPhone uses Lightning. So, they have to weigh the benefits and downsides to the scenario. Apple's connector is more physically advanced, but also license-encumbered and genuinely impossible to standardize a-la USB. Apple made no attempt to formalize Lightning under USB-IF. Their horse isn't even on the racetrack.
If you consider Lightning's value to be greater than the overall harm of converging on a USB standard, then you should lobby Apple to make it an open spec and remove MFi in favor of USB class-compliance. Until that point, it will be deservedly remembered by history as a petty attempt to push unwanted IP on customers who would otherwise have no choice in the matter.