I do digital painting on the side, as a hobby. In that field, the iPad Pro, specifically the Procreate app, has been revolutionary -- every single famous digital illustrator, concept artist, and comics artist I follow on Instagram has one, and they post gorgeous work done on them regularly. It's the only tool that comes remotely close to challenging the gold standard workflow of Wacom tablet + Photoshop, and Wacom and Adobe have been feeling the heat, ratcheting up their marketing efforts to try and attract back budding young artists to their tools.

On the other hand, the iPad can't seem to actually replace those tools. Those pro artists still use a Wacom for their professional corporate work. The problem is less the software, I think, than the limitations the software forces by nature of the hardware. For professional work, you need as big a screen as possible -- Wacoms go up to 32". You also need hotkeys for an efficient workflow. Hunting and tapping through menus on a touchscreen is, by nature, going to be slower then having your left hand ready to hit the undo command at a moment's notice. Sure, it might be possible to plug a big external screen and a full keyboard into your iPad, but at that point, is it really an iPad anymore? What professional artist would bother buying an iPad to act as a desktop computer tower when they could buy an actual desktop computer tower with better specs for cheaper?

So the iPad is about as good as it can possibly be: such a good touchscreen tablet that professional artists love it in all situations where they're willing to sacrifice power and flexibility for the convenience of a fully portable touchscreen tablet. It's not very good at replacing a full professional art setup on a desktop. But should it really aspire to be? In other words, I agree with this article, but disagree with its conclusions. Tablets won't replace laptops not because the iPad isn't a good enough tablet, but because they're simply never going to be the most efficient work machine you can buy.