USB-C puts the compliant side (springs) in the plug. This is the part that fatigues and wears out. Lightning puts it in the socket. This means that Lightning wi

USB-C puts the compliant side (springs) in the plug. This is the part that fatigues and wears out. Lightning puts it in the socket. This means that Lightning will wear out after sufficient connection cycles, and you need to repair your device; with USB-C you can wear out a cable and just replace it, the device will be fine. Additionally, Lightning plug connectors have a higher tendency to corrode. This is, I believe because the exposed mating surface on the plug end easily gathers debris (in particular e.g. oils and grease), and that can cause poor contact which can result in oxidation due to heating and electrolytic effects. USB-C does not have this problem, as none of the mating surfaces are exposed to being touched. The debris that tends to collect inside USB-C ports is usually solid fluff, not liquids. And Lightning is just a terrible standard anyway. iPhones to this day use compressed video over USB2 for their "HDMI" output dongles (which actually have an Ax class CPU in them just to decode the video) because Apple were too short-sighted in their design to allow for enough expandability to support uncompressed digital video properly.