Hot take: The iPad works best when you stop treating it like a laptop
Every iPad conversation seems to end up on the same questions: can it replace a laptop, does it have "real" multitasking, is Stage Manager good enough? My take is simple: it shines when you stop forcing it into that role.
I commute from the suburbs into the city and I'm always grabbing tiny pockets of time: standing on a packed train, waiting for a transfer, or sitting in a lobby for 12 minutes before a meeting. In those moments the iPad is unbeatable. It wakes instantly, stays focused, and lets me read and mark up a PDF, knock out a few emails, check my calendar, sketch a quick idea, or unwind with a game without the whole laptop ritual of finding a surface and booting up.
The minute I try to use it like a laptop for real work I hit friction. Window juggling becomes a small project. File handling is fine until it is not. And when I need to switch between several apps, reference material, and a bunch of browser tabs, I spend more energy managing the interface than doing the work.
So for me the iPad is not a laptop substitute. It's an in-between device that turns dead time into useful time and makes long days feel lighter.
How do you think about it: do you judge the iPad by how close it gets to a laptop, or by how well it fills the gaps a laptop is bad at?