> tiling makes much less sense on a laptop

Definitely disagree. I feel a laptop is the sweet spot for wanting each app to take up exactly half the screen.

Same, the smaller screen I'm at, the more I feel the need for automatic proper tiling that is easily controllable. Meanwhile, at my desktop with a huge display, I just use Gnome3 and almost no windows are fullscreen, they just hang around and are slightly visible, no need to care much about available space at all.