Let's be charitable here, the lightning connector appears to be more durable than USB-C, at least on the device side. There's no protrusion, whereas in USB-C the contacts are on a very thin prong that çan be damaged if something small enough manages to get inside the connector.
I'm not aware of such issues, but i'm personally still running micro-USB devices only so i have zero clue. Let me know if you have links/resources on this issue.
However, i'm fully aware these were not the arguments presented by Apple when they refused the USB standards. If Apple cared for durability, which they definitely don't [0], i'm sure a lot of people would appreciate that and maybe standards could be improved across the industry.
The fact that Apple never cared for any form of standard that i know of [1] does not give them a lot of credit.
[0] They pioneered making it very hard to replace your own battery and flipped the finger on everyone by using non-standard screws on purpose. Seriously, how can it be legal to sell a product which requires any form of tooling to change a battery?! Let's not even get started on software obsolescence on iOS/macOS...
[1] USB and VGA, sure, because they were forced on them. Maybe FireWire? But even then i'm not sure it was a standard back when Apple started using it... On the software side, apart from email, DNS and WWW clients they also don't respect any standard protocols: AirPlay, iCloud, etc.
> I follow smartphone world quite closely and have never heard/read about USB-C issues.
This isn't an effective point as the "smartphone world" is plagued by ephemeral devices which are either susceptible to programmed obsolescence or are caught in an upgrade treadmill due to a myriad of reasons (non-replaceable batteries failing, screen problems, camera issues, hardware failing due to wear, blocked software updates, fads, etc..)
