I disagree. iPad is fundamentally a touch device, and trying to shoehorn macOS into this paradigm would have probably doomed iPad–remember, that's what the competition was doing back before iPad, and you know how the sales of those devices were…
As far as I'm concerned the "big iPhone" idea is a failure. I don't want a tablet that doesn't have the full power of a PC OS like macOS or Windows. That doesn't preclude touch. The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch. And Apple has the market power to pull that off.
I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps. Yes, both options require a lot of work, but Microsoft is further ahead in having shipped it for years rather than denying the problem, as Apple does.
Yes…is there something preventing you from doing so?
> Play movies stored on my external hard disc?
Well, you could if your hard disc supported a format that iOS could understand, such as a lightning cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.
> Download Youtube videos for local playback, as some Mac apps can do?
There are apps that let you do this.
> Can I build an iOS app? An Android app?
No, unfortunately you can't do this yet. This is one of the things that iPad cannot do yet and I'm sure Apple is working on.
> The OS and apps could and should be updated to support touch.
This is an awful lot of work for developers…especially on Apple's platforms, where bolt-on solutions are rare and most apps try to make full use of the medium they have.
> I want an OS with the full power of a PC OS + touch. You can get there by taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful, or by taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps.
Yes, we all do–and Apple is doing this from the "taking a mobile OS and making it more powerful" rather than "taking a PC OS and adding touch to the OS and apps" as Microsoft is doing. My argument is that this is the better way to do things, and the market seems to largely agree.
That just doesn't work because of business decisions on google's end.
Full multitasking, which is required for the hours or days it takes for such a long upload, and ability to connect an external hard disc.
> if your hard disc supported a format that iOS could understand, such as a lightning cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.
Which is to say, hardly any of them.
> There are apps that let you do this.
Show me some that still work. I looked but couldn't find.
If I have to transfer the code to a Mac, I'd rather develop on the Mac. I don't need an iPad. Besides, Playgrounds is not a substitute for the full Xcode.