It's a hard sell for curmudgeons like me with a laptop that does everything you listed and more.

Maybe I'm the idiot, but you won't catch me dead paying laptop money for a neuter-computer.

I don't think this is fair. Of the uses listed:

iPads are better for watching shows on a stationary bike, since they fit on the bike

iPads are better for reading manga, since you can hold them vertically

and iPads are clearly better for drawing--you can't draw on a laptop.

There are some hybrid laptops that do these things, but they're bad at them. Especially drawing, I've used enough HP convertibles with "stylus support" over the years to know that.

Hey good for you man. It's still one of the most popular drawing tablets on the market.

The sous vide is one of the most popular ways to prepare a steak. It still doesn't replace even a 10th of what my kitchen is capable of.

But an awful lot of people have a sous vide cooker in their kitchen.

This, especially nowadays that Mac OS has an ARM target, and there’s essentially (literally?) no difference between an iPad and MacBook hardware

> there’s essentially (literally?) no difference between an iPad and MacBook hardware

Form factor. Touch screen. GPS. Cellular. Circular polarization. These are all literal hardware differences between the iPad and MacBook, and every single one of them makes the iPad suitable for my use case (ForeFlight running on an iPad mounted to the yoke) where a MacBook would not be.

You can get a laptop with all those built-in, though. The only reason the Mac lacks those things is artificial market segmentation.

Also, can you give an example of a laptop (or non-Apple tablet) with a circularly polarized LCD? I've never been able to find one, but it's not a spec that's often published…

Sure, but none of them run ForeFlight, so…