There is no "unfair advantage" to USB-C patent holders, it's a standard that the industry settled on in a cooperative fashion in which Apple was itself a major player.

No one prevented the industry from working on a "patent-free" different standard.

Point is, you can't and shouldn't promote _different brands of connectors_ as it defeats the purpose of having less waste if in a household iPhone users are gonna use a different charger from the others.

EDIT: Someone asked about the mandate for it, and deleted, but worth pointing out that the EU parliament supported this with a majority of 602 to 13, so it has support literally from the far left to the far right.

Not sure how that's irony, since the connector is proprietary and not an open standard, resulting in e-waste and expensive chargers.

Your argument would have more weight if they opened it up. Do you think Apple should have done that?

As for longevity, dunno; Micro-USB was around since 2007 and is still in use. Usb a of course is decades strong. And the European preference of Micro-USB does not seem to have prevented other standards. And of course, 3.5mm connector has been around for way way longer (until Apple decided to murder it in cold blood:). There's Ethernet of course. IEEE and various C-series cables?

You do need to pay them a (very reasonable) yearly fee if you wish to use the USB logo on your product though, and this includes agreeing to subject your product to compliance testing. As far as standards bodies go, USB is just about the furthest from "authoritarian" you can get.

Rent to high? No problem, make increasing rent illegal. Got a homeless problem? Make it illegal to be homeless. Don't like changing your power cord? No problem: illegal. All these ideas would be like playing chess with the ability to only think one move ahead. It would be like having a 12 year old king pronounce today is ice cream day [all while facing certain thermonuclear war].