For many, many people, the iPad absolutely DOES replace having a traditional computer. The prediction came true.
I rarely bother traveling with a laptop anymore unless I need to present or run demos. My iPad pro + the fancy keyboard case gives me insane portability and battery life plus access to all my files (via Dropbox), native Office, etc.
Whining that "you can't do anything but game and consume in iOS" in 2021 is just hilariously wrong.
iOS imposes limitations on that, you cannot run third party applications that are not on the store, you can't write your own programs or scripts, or you can with 100 limitations that makes it in practice impossible to do so.
And I'm not talking about the hardware, it's powerful, probably more powerful by a lot of computers, but in the end the stuff that you can do on an iPad is far less than the stuff that you can do with a Raspberry Pi, a 35$ computer, but with Linux on it, and that lets you do whatever you want.
Let's talk about office. Try to open a spreadsheet with macros on an iPad, of course you can't, even if Microsoft wants to implement it, that would violate the clause that an application shouldn't run third party code. A lot of companies have spreadsheets with macros to do their administration (I don't say that this is good, I only say that in the real world Excel is abused and that is a fact).
Safari doesn't have the same support of Firefox/Chrome. In my country for a couple of sites of some public administration you still need Internet Explorer! Even if the site work on Safari, they are probably not optimized for touchscreens and mostly thought to be used with a keyboard and a mouse.
And all the other applications? How about all the management software that is used in all companies?
Email clients? Too basic compared on the one for PC. Other specific applications? The one on iOS are more basic. Specific kind of software to talk to specific equipment? Doesn't exist.
Support for external USB OTG devices? Practically not existent on iOS.
My wife pretty frequently wants to do simple room diagrams.
I'm hosting a game night for an RPG. Everybody needs a laptop - the player software doesn't work in Safari.
I frequently pull and add notes to large passages of text. My notes are kept in markdown and in the cloud. This workflow is basically unusable outside of a real computer.
Most people want real computers.
IOW, you're defining "PC" in a way that excludes the thing you don't want to define as a "computer," which amounts to a semantic game, not a description of reality.
For many, many people, an iPad answers all the needs they have. It's a computer.
God help you if you actually want to browse a network share or use a non-standard cloud.
The iPad is just barely, barely capable of downloading a document from email, opening it, signing it and emailing it back out. I bet most users couldn't do it without instruction.
To be fair, on a PC every app has access to your Dropbox.
Every app on my ipad needs oauth access. That means those credentials can sit on a remote server and be leaked or used at will, and no firewall or filesystem permission is going to help me.
The laptop can do everything that the iPad can do except being a touchscreen device.
So, unless I know I have to write code, I don't carry my laptop anymore. 10 years (or even 5 years ago), this was unthinkable for me.
I personally was very excited about the iPad right up until the point I found out it had been 'downgraded' to use the iPhone interface. It went from 'shut up take my money' to 'meh, i will get something else' pretty much instantly.
I have bought a few for family members. They use it for gaming, watching videos, and some light web surfing. I personally just use a nice light laptop.
You can extend it like you have. But many people do not.
If I had to 'do over' I might go down the route you have. But as is I am pretty sunk into my work flow.
YMMV, but this guy couldn't even use the device for entertainment/reliable text editing. If that's what it takes to replace a "traditional computer", then I'm pretty sure my left shoe qualifies as one.
