Lightning cables are actually backwards to what is desired:

In USB standards the part that wears out (the spring pins) are on the cable, and thus easily replaced. In lightning the wear piece is in the expensive device, the cable has no moving parts. Beyond that, lightning has exposed pins, kind of a bad idea.

Definitely better than micro B, but far inferior to USB C.

I’m mostly annoyed by the bugs. Pretty new to iOS here, started with a 13 mini and this is the buggiest experience I’ve ever had now on a 16 pro.

Yep this is the real reason - Apple is so hostile towards developers and no support outside of proprietary Metal API it’s no surprise there are few games.

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CPU is pretty much irrelevant to GPU choice.

Personally I wouldn’t buy any recent intel CPU with the dishonesty and major flaws in their products as of late, but that’s up to you to decide - AMD’s most recent CPUs haven’t been amazing either, but don’t have hardware flaws at least.

Money up front vs people just not paying the bill at the end of the month.

Probably their way to get rid of extra stock.