Honest question: What data do you store on an iPad Air? On a phone you might have some photos and videos but isn't a tablet just a media consumption device? Especially on iOS where they try to hide the filesystem as much as possible.
Not to mention that occasionally is nice to have a set of downloaded media available for vacation/travel and 64GB isn't enough to download week worth of content from Netflix.
This is why this is so annoying - you're right, I don't need 512GB or 256GB. But I'd still like to have more than "You're out of space!!" amount.
This is actually most of the storage space -- videos downloaded for consumption in places with no or bad internet.
[1]: https://liliputing.com/you-can-use-a-floppy-disk-drive-with-...
I mean, what would happen if you yanked out the drive while an app was running on it?
I could fit more if I didn’t insist on downloading everything 1080p I guess.
In my sphere, everyone with an iPad uses it for the Apple Pencil and/or video editing. Raw files for drawings get surprisingly big, once you get up into the many tens of layers, considering an artist can draw a few a day.
Games. You can put maybe three or four significant games on an iPad Air before it maxes out. (MTG Arena is almost 20GB all on it's own, Genshin Impact is like 40+ GB)