It’s also most probably a small part of the story about the second port.

We know from this interview with Schiller [0] that there was a clear price target for the first iPad, set early on at under $500, and that cutting everything superfluous was key in reaching the low price target (nearly all journalists were expecting a much higher price for an Apple tablet at the time)

“Well, if we’re going to get to a price point like that, we need to remove things aggressively.”

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/15/technology/de...