I have a Smart Keyboard Folio case, which is super slim and light. My 12.9" 2018 iPad Pro is smaller and light but still has a good keyboard feel. (Note: I have a mechanical keyboard on my home Mac, but can still type like a demon on the thin iPad keyboard. It's surprisingly ergonomic.)

I know there's basically no chance I'll be able to run Emacs or VS Code on this portable little device any time soon, but if I could, it'd be my main device by a long way. There's no hardware limitation preventing it, just artificial restrictions on a "pro" device.

I want it to just run macOS. The 12.9" M2 iPad Pro is absolutely perfect for me in every way except the gimped OS. The screen is great, plenty of storage, amazing battery life, it's light and portable, WiFi 6E, and a cellular modem. Everyone has their own unique needs but for me this would be the absolute ultimate work device... if it ran macOS.

As it stands I have absolutely no interest. It's generous to describe "Stage Manager" as a gimmick.

I don’t want to use the touch interface while developing. I want to be able to do development on the same device that I can use the touch interface for other things as well, like using the Pencil to markup screenshots or design docs. It seems ridiculous that I still have to carry around a bigger, heavier laptop just for that one final use case.

I also have been using a 13” mac for years, so “cramped screen” doesn’t really apply to me on a 12.9” iPad pro’s XDR. It is more than capable, and I would hopefully be able to plug it into my external monitor at home.

I’ve done a significant amount of coding on a terminal on an Android phone.

> The entirety of iPadOS would need to be overhauled in order for it to be conducive for developer work

I disagree. I used an iPad for sysadmin, datascience, some math, and some web dev. Most of the pain comes from arbitrary restrictions Apple places on iPads. (I’d imagine it’ll get more painful as my eyes worsen.)

The appeal is simple: Being able to develop with whatever device you have on you. A laptop beats a tablet, a tablet beats a phone, and a phone beats pencil and paper.

They wouldn't even need to overhaul iPadOS! All they'd need to do is allow Parallels, VMWare or other folks to make virtualization software for the iPad, and people could just run Linux on it (or - gasp! - macOS). The M1 and M2 Macbooks can run virtual machines without a problem, but iPads are not (sigh) allowed to. Despite Apple explicitly and inexplicably selling 16GB models of the iPad Pro.

I can afford an ipad pro or a macbook pro, not both. I primarily illustrate, but it would be damn nice to be able to compile apps for my ipad.

What about something like Jetbrains Fleet where its all done on a remote computer but the IDE is local?

An iPad is more portable than a Mac.