Comment by rootusrootus

The iPhone had by far the biggest ecosystem of Lightning accessories, the biggest base of users with Lightning cords. It was a foregone conclusion that a bunch of people were going to be angry about losing their Lightning accessories and having to buy new cords, and another bunch of people were going to be happy to switch their last non-USB-C device over. Apple needed to find the crossover point where the latter would outnumber the former.