I did my last leg of high school on an school-mandated iPad, and it's not hard to get what everyone here is talking about. Want to do CAD? Gotta get a different machine. Want to record music? iPads don't have the drivers for our DAC. Want to type an essay? Go rent a detachable keyboard from the library. So on and so forth until you never feel motivated to create anything superfluous again. It was an exceptionally poor replacement for a laptop, particularly when I wanted to make something or do creative work.
Edit: I will take your point though, that Apple at least attempts to produce premium products with a purpose. However, judging by the number of iPads and iPhones I see being used as passive content consumption interfaces, I'm not sure the outcome is much different.