Lightning is still better than USB C in terms of physical connector design (Lightning puts the male part on the more easily replaced cable side). Annoying that it’s not a strict improvement being imposed.
You can keep tooting the Apple horn, Lightning was better than micro USB but saying it's better than USB-C is incorrect on every measureable point. Lightning is dead, long live USB-C!
the problem is, it can snap or be sheared off under unfortunate circumstances - say, someone laying their phone on their belly in bed, putting strain on the connector, a chonky cat deciding to jump down right onto the charger cable while the phone is plugged in, or someone dropping their phone while it's attached to a power bank.
With Lightning, it's a matter of removing the broken connector of the cable and that's it. With USB-C, you gotta replace the socket, tough luck on that given that these things generally don't come as single spare parts.
(IMHO, that is the next thing the EU should tackle - parts that often need to be replaced such as sockets and buttons should be mandated to be on a dedicated flex cable that can be easily replaced)
The only thing usbc has going for it is wide usage.
Lightning can do usb3 things if designed for it. So software side is not an issue between the two.
I'll take a 1% higher chance of a port wearing out over a 100% chance of needing to always carry two cables and not being able to share accessories with Android users any day.
The fine springy wiry bits that are impossible to clean and easy to damage are on the cable, which is a massive improvement. See: the super common broken Ethernet ports.
I'm old enough to have done that, and to really miss the old world, but an improvement is an improvement.
None of the stuff I grew up with is "hackable" anymore. None of the design constraints of small, sleek, performant, high battery life and secure are amenable to that.
Even (production) Linux has stopped being a hacker's paradise and is tightening the rope.
And that's what the iPhone is: a production phone.
You want some cool toys? Get Arduinos, hacker laptops, RPis, Arch.
It's all still out there, but not every device needs to have its guts out.
That being said I will always miss SoftIce, being able to look stuff up in memory, being able to look stuff up in network traffic... alas, it's gone, and the truth is we're better off for it.
Yeah, basically just repeating what luma said but you have this backwards. USB-C does have the female part on the cable side. Its just also enclosed in a metal cover for protection.
The springs being on the socket is also not a great feature of Lightning, though usually the device itself has a shorter lifetime than the socket.