[CharlesW]

Nobody knows, but my guess: Apple is hiding a test of advanced battery fault detection and monitoring technologies that will eventually show up throughout their battery-powered products. Final Boss Lightning was the simplest, least risky way to support the power delivery and communication needs in the AVP Mark I timeframe.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8986866B2/en?oq=8986866

[wtallis]

Battery fault detection needs to be implemented entirely within the battery pack in order to be worthwhile. USB is more than sufficient for communicating information from a battery pack to a host system.

There's no need to speculate about complicated technology based on ancient patents when there's a simple and far more plausible explanation available: Obviously what this connector provides that Type C lacks is a secure latching mechanism, which is critical because there's no battery in the headset itself.

[eternityforest]

Why not just put a tiny battery in the headset, sufficient for a few minutes of use, like an LTO battery that won't just wear out?

Or add latching to USB-C?

[wtallis]

Adding latching to USB-C would largely defeat the purpose of using a USB-C connector, because you'd be throwing away most of the compatibility that the USB-C connector could win. At that point, the USB-C connector would be there merely to check a box on the spec sheet, rather than because it's the right connector for this purpose.

As for a battery or supercap in the headset itself: by all accounts the headset without a battery is pushing the limits of what is a reasonable weight. There needs to be less stuff in the headset, not more.

[eternityforest]

There's other applications for latching USB-C, not many, because latching is often terrible, but a few.

Apple is probably big enough to convince the USB-IF to make it an official extension to the spec, if they wanted to.

But definitely not an expert, not planning on buying anything Apple or any VR anytime soon.