I actually have nothing but love for Apple, its just funny to see their excuses (and the fanboys excuses over on Macuser forums) when their motivations are entirely profit-based and not consumer-focused. Its the hardware version of Microsoft's IE lock-in debacle.

If every Apple product used Lightning then I could see their arguement in wanting to keep it but as of today (19/10/22) the only Apple product left standing with Lightning is the iPhone. Even the base iPad is now USB-C (but then they do an Apple and cheap-out on the magnetic charging forcing people to buy that ridiculous dongle for the archaic 1st gen pencil)