I don't think even Apple knows what they want to do with the iPad.

I could buy the "companion device" niche for a while until iPad OS 26 came along, which took away most of the "touch first" multi tasking and replaced it with a model that heavily favors mouse and keyboard use. I actually use my iPad less now since the update, because I still primarily used it as a tablet, I don't even own the magic keyboard/trackpad for it.

Now it's essentially a gimped macbook, and it's not really clear on where it fits in their product lineup. Is it supposed to be a laptop replacement? A companion device? An art tool? An expensive e-reader? No one, not even Apple, knows.

So yeah, they either need to come up with a clear vision for what it's supposed to be, or finally just let it be a 2-in-1 macbook with apple pencil support.

I think they’re very happy to have the 2 parallel product lines; they might overlap a bit but who cares, business is about the numbers, not ideological purity of product lines.

The line they’ll probably never cross is that the Mac can run software in a (mostly) non sandboxed mode, with unrestricted background processes, which means it’ll always be the platform of choice for developers. Those extra restrictions on the iPad makes them more free to push it/experiment with it in the direction they wish (for better or worse, as we’ve seen with all the wonky windowing implementations, although the current one is mostly fine)