Comment by monocasa

Their laptops never had lightning, so there was no "moving along". And iPad Pros moved because they're trying to create a product niche that people use like a laptop/desktop, but where Apple actually gets that sweet, sweet App Store money for all software on the device. In that niche, people expect actual expandibility to access stuff like large disk storage, and the App Store money greatly outweighs the patent money from lightning.

If apple had planned to drop lightning, we wouldn't still have rhe crappy USB2 controllers backing that port on those SoCs that would still would have been under development when the EU decision came down.