Despite what people think. Lightning port survived way longer than usb-c ports do. I’ve seen phones with the usb-c port with broken middle bit. Go wobbly and lost contact on the board in the phone.
Let’s not even get into the terrible standard of usb-c where no 2 cables are the same. Some cables work on some devices…
> Lightning port survived way longer than usb-c ports do
Apple's manufactoring is usually more robust than most, so I doubt this is due to usb-c itself of the manufacturer. Personally I have seen bad usb-a port but never usb-c (and usb-c ports are supports to last for at least 10000 insert cycles, as per the standard).
> no 2 cables are the same
We can either have a single port supporting a variety of protocols, or, roughly, a port for each protocol. Considering the mostly hierarchical relationship between protocols, I very much prefer the former. Two usb-c cables are not be the same in order to sustain low prices for the lowest end of the protocols, else every cable would have to be a thunderbolt 5 cable costing 100$ or whatever. The problem is not the existence of the protocols, but the companies that make confusing marketing and the fact that the usb standards namings of the protocols is bad (see usb3.1 gen 2) (probably intended so by the same companies, but do not have any evidence or anything). Otherwise things are not that complicated.
I would much rather have different connectors for different underlying protocols: HDMI and USB-C are both really annoying in that the cable can silently be the limiting factor.
Let’s not even get into the terrible standard of usb-c where no 2 cables are the same. Some cables work on some devices…