It's a shame Apple won't open up the Lightning connector and let everybody use it. From a physical device connection and hardware failure perspective, it's actually better.
Lightning connectors only have eight pins, the other side of the connector has the gold plating just for the looks of it. The socket is monitoring both sides with flipped pin order, one side is always unused. It's a ridiculously wasteful design. I'm glad other companies can't use it.
