@toriver
Ipad 7 (2019)
ipad 8 (2020)
ipad 9 (2021)
Ipad mini 5 (2019)
Ipad air 3 (2019)

And a bunch of other stuff: theverge.com/23871824/apple-pr

all had lightning connectors even though apple had been using usb-c on certain macbooks and ipads all the way back in 2015-2017 ...

The reason all these devices I mentioned don't have USB-C is because Apple didn't want to do it. If you want USB, you had to buy the pro products.
If apple actually cared, they would have gone ALL IN on C. They didn't.