one of the main advantages of the Apple Lightning cable is that it is fully reversible. When the Cupertino firm only used the 30-pin connector for the iPhone, we users had a problem when connecting the cable and that is that it could only be connected in one direction.
The truth is that it was somewhat uncomfortable as is the microUSB connector since many times you had to turn the connector. Shortly after when at the iPhone of the Year 2012 event Phil Schiller presents Lightning, announces that it can be connected on both sides without problem.
In this case we want to share the prototype of the Lightning cable from the AppleDemoYT Twitter account, which is well known for sharing this type of Apple prototypes. In this case it shows a Lightning connector with the connection direction marking that the 30-pin connectors had used by Apple to know the "sense in which we had to connect it":
Prototype Apple Lightning Cables (PROTO4) with a symbol engraved that's very similar to 30 pin cables (that indicates the corrrect side up). #appleinternal pic.twitter.com/ORWuoPDmcm
- Apple Demo (@AppleDemoYT) February 19, 2021
Logically Apple had planned to launch a cable with a connection option on both sides and it could not do it any other way after the versatility of the connectors of the competition, although it is true that many did not allow this type of connections on both sides either. Be that as it may at the moment the Apple connector became the best Apple connector for various reasons and one of these reasons was its connection option on one side or the other.
The Lightning connector is a decade old and Apple seems to want to put this connector aside to focus on MagSafe as a defined charging method for iPhone and possibly other devices signature.