So lightning cables offer transfer rates of 480Mb/s - USB 2.0 offers 625Mb/s. You are cross that they swapped out Lightning for USB on the main models and use USB 3 as a differentiator in the Pro models. Fair enough, but that’s not ‘malicious’. It’s not even malicious compliance.
Lightning connectors are definitely worse than USB-C, but when they were introduced the alternative was micro USB which is objectively worse than Lightning cables.
Of course, with wireless charging I haven’t used an actual cable in five years so it doesn’t matter that much to me.
Apple was forced by the EU to stop using their old and worse connector
So they’re complying, but they’re purposefully limiting the less expensive phone as a malicious compliance to that
Pretty simple really
So lightning cables offer transfer rates of 480Mb/s - USB 2.0 offers 625Mb/s. You are cross that they swapped out Lightning for USB on the main models and use USB 3 as a differentiator in the Pro models. Fair enough, but that’s not ‘malicious’. It’s not even malicious compliance.
USB 2.0 is also 480Mbps.
Lightning connectors are definitely worse than USB-C, but when they were introduced the alternative was micro USB which is objectively worse than Lightning cables.
Of course, with wireless charging I haven’t used an actual cable in five years so it doesn’t matter that much to me.