Sorry; no sale. If this thing is to be a glorified toy, then you may be right. If they want to position it as a true tablet compute platform, gotta have those “relics”, friend. Look at competing products; tell me that they are all wrong.
Show me a successful competing tablet.
The "tablet = laptop - keyboard" model doesn't work.
Apple is poised to sell more tablet computers this year than have sold in the last decade. Tell me, what is is those competing products are doing right?
Apple ditched the floppy drive while others still offered it. Apple ditched the old serial and parallel connectors in favor of USB and Firewire, and the others still offered RS-232 and parallel. Apple ditched CRTs for LCDs way before the competition.
Because of its unique position, Apple can afford to drop legacy technology and legacy ways of thinking. OTOH, the iPad still has USB, just not in the form of that overly-large USB plug.