> And since they were proprietary, you couldn't just buy a better cable made by someone else! You had to buy the same cable that you knew was going to fail!

Godswallop! Aftermarket Lightning cables were readily available shortly after Apple first use the the port.

Agreed though, their own Apple branded cables that came with the device are terrible, and I always just threw them straight in the bin.

And connection cycles is the wrong metric for USB-C vs Lightning. The correct metric is how many and how much side-force removals can the port withstand.

My experience shows that for USB-C the answer is wildly insufficient whereas for Lightning it’s sufficiently high enough that it won’t be a concern.