And the fact you brought up the money argument just shows you have no idea what it is going on.
Apple has been pretty aggressive about patenting their connector designs [1]. So sarcastically I'd say this could be in use exactly 20 years from now :-)
[1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
http://www.arcfn.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-...
(I suspect that the chargers with integrated micro-USB cable are, for the most part, quite a bit safer due to not imitating Apple and having plenty of space. I actually took a dirt-cheap Chinese 5V supply apart a while ago because it had died - proper controller chip and all the works, good half-centimeter of isolation between high and low voltage, slot in the PCB along the part of the isolation boundary where they're closest, etc.)
Having to have different cables from pretty much everyone else, on the other hand, will.
In my house there are at least a dozen microUSB cables. There's 2-3 Apple cables. That reflects the relative ratio of devices that use each, and it means charging or connecting anything that requires microUSB is trivial - there's always a cable at hand. There's half a dozen microUSB cables within a one metre radius of where I'm sitting at my desk right now.
Won't matter if you're at home and have a nice collection of Apple specific cables. But it is likely to make far more difference for people when they're out travelling for example.
Having a "future proof" connector? Not going to matter for anything but a tiny sliver of early adopters who might otherwise need adapters now and again (e.g. MHL adapters for micoUSB now, that are quickly becoming obsolete as TV's etc. start getting MHL support built in)
It seems to me that having done something twice in the past is a better proof of being able to do that something than speculation is.
The implication of this article is that the Lightening port can be repurposed, without changes to the device's hardware, simply by providing a new cable and software.
If the iPhone5 doesn't have internal USB3 or HDMI or DP support, it can't magically gain it through the use of a new cable and new software. It's probable the iPhone6 will support all or most of those, but that's because they changed the device's hardware...
That's not microUSB becoming compatible - It's having to add hardware inside the device which makes use of microUSB's pins. The Lightning connector seems to push that to outside of the device i.e. make the right cable/adapter and software and you can adapt to anything without requiring support from specific hardware inside the device. At least that is what he seems to saying and it'll probably take some more analysis and dissection (not to mention actual adapters) to support that assertion.