> What is this silly ‘real work’ gate-keeping? I guess the author means their work.

This is about productivity. Real-work is usually about being about to do many different things with a single machine. This typically requires interoperability between applications, a file system (to access data thru a unified interface even outside of apps), and standard ways of storing data. The iPad can be very good for doing very specific tasks in one application, but everything else is lacking.

Of course, if your "work" depends only on a single application, then you will be happy with pretty much anything. If you need to work with a wealth of different applications, at the same time, on the same machine, then "real work" won't be possible on an iPad easily: probably do-able, but akin to painting with spaghetti instead of brushes.