Maybe but Apple tended to (in the past) be a focused company. They decided to not support development in the past so they straight up ran from it, supporting zero parts of it, gaining security benefits. They know the iPad as-is isn't designed for it and have no intent to do it. Now, when they eventually come around, I'm sure it will be in a big, all or nothing, way.

That's kinda the best thing about Apple, they are brutally focused on solving a problem at any cost. Thats why AirPods are so small, the apple watch is so incredibly featured and why they build their own CPUs. Making choices like that sometimes means realizing opportunity cost, you can't have the best of everything.

Meanwhile, in fairness, the Mac is actually a pretty great development platform.