> Can you provide examples of where Apple has substituted non-standard connectivity where standard-compliant would have worked as well? I'll do you one better,

> Can you provide examples of where Apple has substituted non-standard connectivity where standard-compliant would have worked as well? I'll do you one better, actually; here's an entire product category full of it: https://mfi.apple.com/ https://mfi.apple.com/ > It sucks that we have a mix of both right now, but that's a consequence of Lightning having failed to gain wider adoption, not of it being a bad product. And why did that happen? Couldn't possibly be because the Lightning connector is license and patent-encumbered whereas USB is a freely-implemented standard. You make it sound like Lightning was a legitimate competitor. It was a lost cause, with Apple being the single advocate for it's adoption and refusing to concede on any of the connector's pain-points. It could have gone up against MicroUSB and still lost. > Firewire "lost" that battle and USB-C "won" Specifically because Apple worked with the industry to create a USB-compliant standard to supersede FireWire (Thunderbolt). Now that we have Thunderbolt it really feels stupid that FireWire even existed in the first place. > If Apple was trying to kill off USB-C, it would have made much more sense to go all-in on Firewire back when it still had a chance. Not really, since FireWire was still a minority connector and they could have literally never forced the entire industry to support it. > I don't think that's evil. I think it's a rational tradeoff. You don't have to agree with me on that :) Then surely you won't disagree with the people that get angry when Apple spurns Open standards in favor of less functional proprietary options. All Apple has to do, to avoid criticism, is offer both as an option. Users will gravitate towards whichever product they prefer, which is a concept foreign to Apple called "competition".