Was the lightning port really necessary?

Frustrated with the inconvenience of the lightning port.

One thing that consumers loved about their apple products was that they all used the same docking port. Companies all over the world were making accessories that had the old ports on them for all apple products to dock. Cars even come with an option of having either a docking port in their cars or the wire connected docking option. Bose, Beats, Sony, Panasonic...and all the others even have music systems with the old ports on them for people. With all these accessories and happy customers...why did Apple resort to the new "lightning" port?

I feel as if Apple needs to justify this change; from what it looks like Apple is more concerned about making more money than it is about doing what the customers want. By making the new port, consumers will have to buy their adapter port which like all Apple products are a bit pricey.

I heard the new ports charge the products faster...if this is true where is the proof?

Apple is known for creating products with top quality engineering. With a change like this there has to be hard engineering evidence that it does indeed charge better.

The old docks prevented Apple from making their products thinner, this is probably true and so Apple resorted to the lightning adapter. (From what I gather)

But the new lightning ports are pretty close to the same size as the micro USB port that almost every company with handheld accessories is moving towards. Apple was for a universal port system at one point. Why didnt Apple go with that option?

This is really upsetting and I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders these things. I like Apple products, the engineering that goes on with this company amazes me. I'm not bitter towards Apple or biased. I'm studying engineering and would just like to see the proof that backs up Apples desicion to change the ports, and why they didnt go with the micro USB instead.