Apple has long favored developing its own connection standards that would better suit its needs, well before portable devices or iPhones, or the MFi program was ever a thing.
The 30-pin Dock connector, predecessor to Lightning, first appeared in 2003 on the iPod 3G. It supported FireWire and USB data, control channels, line level audio, and eventually video, as well as power, and the ability to serve as a physical fixture to support devices upright in docked placements.
By comparison, its contemporary at the time, and most compact version of USB, was the Mini connector, which had four pins and supported data and power; basically just a smaller form factor for standard USB. It was supplanted in 2007 by Micro USB, which shrank the form factor, and increased durability. Micro allowed for smaller, thinner devices, but brought little else to the table, and couldn't better what Apple's Dock connector already did, except in size.
Apple designers' obsession with smaller, thinner devices, and maximizing the available space for componentry (which also extended to its push for nanoSIM cards, and later eSIM) meant that they needed to develop a next-generation connector to meets its goals, and in 2012, the Lightning connector was introduced in the iPhone 5. It was not only small, but capable, and freed users from having to worry about orientation, because it was reversible as well.
Lightning was met with a mixed reaction from end users, who would have to abandon all the 30-pin cables and dock devices they had acquired over its roughtly 9 year existence, and start over, but the benefits were plain, and Apple pledged that it would serve for the next decade, so the next wholesale change was in the distant future.
This inspired the USB IF, which had also recognized the need to develop a modern, and versatile standard, including high-power delivery. USB was conceived for data transfer, and officially only supported low levels of power delivery, while only unofficial kludges made it suitable for what evolved to becoming its de facto purpose among users, charging.
That need, and proposal the IF was considering crystallized into the Type-C standard, which was first finalized in 2014, two years after Lighting had shipped.
Type-C was to be the one standard to rule them all, capable of the "kitchen sink" full of functions, and save users from having to decipher what cable would fit what, or squint to see that which way was up when that USB cable, large or small, needed to be plugged in. (A feeling old GM owners were probably vaguely familiar with when locking/unlocking their cars).
One Apple blogger wrote a contentious column suggesting that Apple had basically invented Type-C, which was counted by arguments that it was not involved at all. Both would be false, as Apple was an IF member, and participated in the project, with a number of its engineers on the record in the development docs.
Though finalized in 2014, it wasn't until 2015 that the first Type-C products shipped, and among them was the 12" MacBook, with (stupidly,) a single Type-C port. Like the iMac in 1998, which fully embraced Type-A, and didn't support anything else. Both introduced when the standards were nascent, not widely adopted, nor assured of success. The MacBooks Pro followed in 2016. The third gen iPad Pro was the first Apple device to adopt Type-C, in 2018.
Samsung, to its credit, gave the S8 a Type-C port in 2017, though ground was first broken by a Chinese brand. Still, Type-C didn't gain much momentum until more recent years, and though the effort to reduce complexity for users was noble, in practice what the One Connector To Rule Them All did accomplish was to shift it to the cables, with the lack of proper labeling hindering the ability to decipher which of the eight cable types a user hold in their hands, with a dollop of laughably poor USB 3.x standards marketing from the USB IF as the cream on top. When Type-C cables aren't even required to support 3.x.
The MFi program is no doubt a tidy revenue stream for Apple, and understandably, it is one which they were reluctant to give up, until it felt Lighting had served its term as pledged, and the switch to Type-C dovetailing nicely with the shove from the EU bureaucrats (who also read, and react, to Apple rumor sites, leading to foolish statements about MFi restrictions on Type-C based on speculation that proved to be false).
But, none of this should be any surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Apple's history creating its own connectors when it felt the off-the-shelf solutions were lacking, and the glacial pace of USB's development-by-commitee model, which has produced such "gems" as the USB 3 Micro-B connector.
Even those who didn't should be grateful that Apple never saddled its devices with that, or the unloved Mini and Micro connectors.
There was nothing better availble when Apple needed to replace the Dock connector with something smaller, so it rolled its own, like it had always done, and some would call finding ways to make money from that smart business, whether it was the original intent. Or not.
