Tablets --- and not just Apple's --- suffer from numerous arbitrarily-imposed limitations, as well as hardware standardisation issues, which cripple funtionality far beyond any fundamental hardware limitations. I've seen this for years on Android (this comment, as with most of mine, is being pecked out slowly on an Android device's highly error-prone soft keyboard, the folio-style bluetooth keyboard having long-since failed and no replacement being available).

Tablets are a win for battery life, form factor, and the ability to seamlessly reorient (portrait, landscape, inverted of either). They're far superior to laptops for reading textual matter --- laptops largely don't transition from landscape to portrait, or do so cumbersomely or with fragile mechanisms. In portrait mode, displays (especially 16:9 high-gloss) ar too short, to low-resolution, and to reflective, to be attractive reading devices.

But OS, available applications, arbitrary app crashing or closing, total available storage (Apple's recent offerings an exception), storage access limitations, finicky inputs, and application sandboxing (understandable from a security perspective, but an absolute pain in the ass from a usaability perspective) are everpresent pain points.

The few tools which actually are generative are poor stepchildren, poorly supported, barely tolerated, anemic compared with their full-fleged bretheren, crippled by storage and permissions models, and under constant attack by the platfform owners. They still shine above all else on these devices. Termux is the only thing on Android which does not precisely suck. Ish on iPad seems a weaker cousin, but with vague promise. Both are needlessly crippled or outright blocked by Google and Apple.

But even a modest set of shell tools, scripting languages, editors, remote-accesss tools (ssh, tmux), and package manageers (pip, cpan, npm, gem/rvm) convert a BDSM consumption-only device into stunningly useful generative kit.

One place Apple have made progress is in standardising enough device physical specs to enable a viable hardware accessory market for keyboards, though most of those keyboards remain crippled by missing critical keys and nonstandard layouts. One begins to suspect deliberate sabotage.

I have neither time not budget to evaluate and trial disappointment after disappointment. I am watching the introduction of full-grade Linux devices from Pine, Purism, and Remarkable with interest. (Remarkable, sadly, seems to be going down the same crippled-onboard-storage-capacity route.)

I don't expect Google, Android, or their equally oppressive hardware partners (Samsung are utterly worthless) to serve this niche. It may be small, but it directly feeds the talent and mindshare pools on which they depend.

Long-standing gripes:

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq