There is no A16 iPad (yet?).

Apple does a lot of BS stuff, but are you trying to claim the controller in iPads and iPhones is the same, or comparable because of age? Because that’s like claiming the screens are the same, or comparable.

I had a very quick check and I think iPads use an external chip for USB 3 - and there may just not have been space on the iPhone’s logic board for that. I think you’d have to judge it next year - since the base models seem to be using last year’s pro chips - if the base model doesn’t support 3.1 speeds then, something fishy is happening

And probably have a separate controller? I’m not very technical at all but I’d assume it’s much easier to fit a separate one on a large surface like the iPad has

Edit: google confirms the iPads have a separate USB3 controller

You mean the Apple that provided more than 20% of the engineering force that developed USBC?

Or the Apple that released the first USBC laptop to market?

That Apple?

It doesn’t sound like you actually have a rebuttal.

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.

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.