EU legislation previously mandated micro USB on phones. That didn't seem to kill innovation, we still got USB-C. The only thing it killed was every manufacturer using a different bad connector. I don't see any downsides.
> Apple was an exception and this feels different to me.
They were an exception because they already had the bestselling smartphone at the time they switched away from the 30-pin connector. Apple could have put a DC barrel-jack as the main power connector and the market would have no choice but to adopt it. They seized the opportunity to create a functionally-identical protocol to USB and encumber it with a licensed connector for personal gain. Regardless of how you feel about the connectors at the time, this was not a serious alternative to USB.
> Everybody and everything is standardizing on USB-C.
Yeah, I wonder which company was known/hated for pushing USB-C early-on as a connection standard yet not fully adopting it themselves.
> If you don’t see any potential downsides you aren’t looking hard enough.
No, if you don't see the problem with the status-quo then you're being blinded by baseless loyalty.
From a regulatory perspective, the situation is this; public utilities cannot converge on a serial specification as long as the iPhone uses Lightning. So, they have to weigh the benefits and downsides to the scenario. Apple's connector is more physically advanced, but also license-encumbered and genuinely impossible to standardize a-la USB. Apple made no attempt to formalize Lightning under USB-IF. Their horse isn't even on the racetrack.
If you consider Lightning's value to be greater than the overall harm of converging on a USB standard, then you should lobby Apple to make it an open spec and remove MFi in favor of USB class-compliance. Until that point, it will be deservedly remembered by history as a petty attempt to push unwanted IP on customers who would otherwise have no choice in the matter.
If you don’t see any potential downsides you aren’t looking hard enough. And this comes from someone who has wanted USB-C for a long time.