Lightning is a superior physical design to USB-C (can't speak to the electrical part). Much like every major tech battle in history, however [1], the worse solution won because of ubiquity. I'm not particularly thrilled because I've had a USB-C connector irretrievably break off in a port once on a laptop but I'll make that trade for being able to use a single cable for all of my devices.

- Not an "Apple Faithful"

[1] VHS vs Beta, Doom vs Marathon, Zergling vs human, etc