I have a different experience with lightning. Almost all my lightning cables show burn marks on the connector on one side and charge only in a particular orientation. This behavior reproduces with new cables and new iDevices. Anecdotally, I never had any issues with USB-C charging.
> This behavior reproduces with new cables and new iDevices.
Considering that this is almost certainly related to your own personal behavior and/or environment, it isn't surprising that you find it reproducible, albeit a bit odd.
It only charging one way indicates corrosion, probably on the cable itself, but possibly on the female port on the device itself. Burn marks probably means there's a grounding issue somewhere. Neither of them have much anything to do with lightning connectors, unless you suppose that the pins being outward facing rather than inward has something to do with the corrosion.
> Considering that this is almost certainly related to your own personal behavior and/or environment, it isn't surprising that you find it reproducible, albeit a bit odd.
Hey, before you accuse people of doing the wrong thing, make sure you're right. Lighting has historically had shorts issues when inserting, and Apple has tried their best to resolve the problem. They never 100% resolved the problem however, although it is far less problematic with newer plugs. It's a big part of the reason why Apple went all in with USB-C so quickly after introducing Lighting.
If someone else has the problem 100% of the time, and you have the problem 0% of the time, I think it is reasonable to presume the fault lies with them or their environment (or at least, not the hardware).
I have exactly the same problem, the middle connector on one side always gets burned. A quick search on google shows that this is a common problem, so I would actually check if this is a common problem or not before defending Apple.
If someone has an issue with their lightning connector shorting out once or twice, that could be chalked up to a manufacturing defect. If it happens always, which they said it does, then it's almost certainly not.
