[a_humean]

Why would apple choose to do that, surely that just increases their repairs costs bill? Is the cynical answer that it will fail well past warrenty in most cases, so prompting the consumer to upgrade because their phone has worn out?

There must be a more charitable explaination.

[evgen]

The more charitable explanation is that the pins for the lightning connectors really do not wear out. This complaint is a made-up problem and in the real world it does not actually happen any more than someone accidentally jamming something into the usb-c port and breaking the center connector. Lighting ports do have one problem usb-c lacks: they collect a bit of pocket lint that can impact connections and eventually needs to be scraped out using the sim ejector tool (or a paperclip.)

[jtbayly]

True about lint in lightning ports, but not entirely true it doesn’t happen in USBC. Probably less common, but I know somebody who had to get some saw dust out of a usb-c port.

[satiric]

USB-C also has the lint problem, at least for me.

[philistine]

It's more difficult to design and build pins for longevity in a cable? I think the logic with Lightning is that Apple can build a very structurally sound connector with pins inside the phone. After all, we have seen few issues with pins in phones failing.