It was a good cable when it first came out, but overstayed its welcome.

Imo the only reason it wasn’t a good cable is that only Apple devices could use it. From a hardware perspective it’s quite nice and has some advantages over USB.

I disagree. Lightning was/is great, especially when it was first announced. You didn’t need to worry about which way you plugged it in, and it didn’t have microUSB teeth that would fuck up your ports, or scratch your device.