It’s wasteful because it contains a chip to verify the cable’s fee was payed to Apple. They’re small but there are a lot of them and they are uneccessary and annoying when they fail and you can’t charge your device.
USB-C is still mechanically inferior. Lightning feels better to use and lasts longer. It always clicks, it’s always snug, it lasts forever. I wish Apple wasn’t so greedy and made it an open standard. Maybe now we would have better connectors on all of our devices.