Because the free market saud USB and Apple said “yeah but we can charge 5x as much for lightning cables and ports and the fanboys will pay.”
I had FireWire drives that spanked USB so for performance reasons yes choice is good but for charging your car or phone, you really don’t get any benefit from vendor lock-in.
I know someone with a Tesla who has 12 different apps for forecourt and car park charging, all expect some minimum credit or top-up so she’s got maybe 500 dollars spread across all the apps.
Our neighbor has a phev with bog standard charging and they have one app. And a standard charger at home.
Lightning was tons better than the miserable mini and micro USB connectors. I was never particularly bothered by paying more for a superior product.
USB C is a good connector, probably even better than Lightning since it shrouds the pins. Making it the standard isn’t a bad idea except we now have not just vendor lock-in but government lock-in. The tradeoff is the market might not innovate an even better connector now. It’s a potential missed opportunity but of course opportunity costs are always somewhat hidden.
The Lightning port i getting very long in the tooth. Its data transfer rate is glacial compared to the usb-c port.