You signed up into a, largely Apple product customer/user to user technical support community.
There is NO Apple here.
We are all just Apple product customers/users, just like you!
No one here works for Apple.
We are all just Apple technical support volunteer users here.
You can still use all your other cables and adapters with your other devices just fine.
The new 2020 iPad Air 4 ia the same design and connection language of the 2018/2020 iPad Pro models, now, which also use USB-C and the 2nd gen Apple Pencil and any other 2018/2020 iPad Pro accessories.
Apple is moving iPads and, eventually, iPhone, over to the universal USB-C data transfer/protocol standard, like every other computing device manufacturer.
This is going to be the way forward for Apple.
No more Apple proprietary Lightning connector and ports.
It's High Speed USB-C now and for the future!
The Lightning connector/port will be going away in all Apple mobile devices in a very short time.
it is what it is now.
People/users complained when Apple ditched the many years used, old Apple 30-pin Dock connector/port, in favor of their new Lightning connector/port for the very same reasons you are complaining about now and, even then, Apple offered no transitional adapters of any type.
The Apple 30-pin Dock connector/port was used on old Apple devices for 6 years when Apple made the switch to another new proprietary, faster speed data transfer protocol, the Lightning connector/port.
Now, another 6 years later, Apple is changing their mobile devices data transfer connection hardware, again, to the overall industry standard, USB-C, and moving away from their own proprietary data transfer connection protocol hardware.
Once again, it is what it is.
