I encountered this same VLC issue on Manjaro this week, so YMMV.

Fair enough, the lightning port is definitely easier to clean

I have an iPhone for work purposes, the lightning connector does it too. I think the only way it would have been avoided is with something considerably less shallow, and then they’d have mechanical cable retention problems to solve

I’d argue that they’re partially right (or at least not entirely wrong) to blame the specification. If the specification makes it easy for crappy manufactures to be crappy, then the specification probably should have planned for that in a better way. And crappy manufactures being crappy is a tale as old as manufacture. Yeah I know there are cable marking requirements, but clearly nobody gives a flying fuck. The USB IF has basically all of the power in this situation, and their members collectively control a significant percentage of the planets wealth, so it’s actually their problem to solve.

Directional antennas exist and are very inexpensive