[hbn]

I think it's really just a limitation of the formfactor. It's first and foremost a touchscreen-centric device. Sure, you can clip a keyboard onto it to type easier and get a weird not-quite-cursor to interact with it, but at it's core, it will always be a touchscreen device, and as such can't expect users to keep peripherals on them at all times to make it more usable. So the OS will always be targeting the vast majority of its users, who are just poking at a touchscreen.

And touchscreen interfaces need to have all their points of interaction on them, or hidden behind non-obvious gestures which does not make for a very good power-user software interface. And iOS at its core (I know they call it iPadOS now, but let's be real, it's iOS with a half-hearted splitscreen/windowing system on top) is made to be a walled garden. A nice walled garden, sure. But not something for productivity, other than its own very specific scenarios, like digital art where you're only planning on drawing, and not going too far outside of the clean-cut path that it expects to be used in.

So for most people, it's just another screen to watch Netflix and YouTube. And it's pretty expensive for that.