heavy lifting stuff gets done on desktop.

For now, while the apps that require heavy lifting outclass the horsepower of most laptops. But the list of things high-end laptops cannot handle is growing shorter every day. There will likely always be specialty activities, but there's also the concept of using the laptop as a thin client connected remotely to the cloud where the heavy lifting happens.

True, but actual heavy lifting work is probably <1% of the current desktop market. Most of it is browsing, messaging, documents.

Ever see someone working with "documents?" They have multiple windows open, but Excel spreadsheets, etc. the business market is a big chunk of what's left of the laptop/desktop market, and it's not amenable to tablets.

So when you need to do heavy lifting, you just give up because all you got is a tablet?

Besides, as far as programming goes, I'm happy I got all the power I can find to iterate quickly, and tablet != power.

This is a response to FatalBaboon, but I can't replay to his comment.

If you need more power, you remotely connect to a server that has as much power as you need.

(I say this as I'm currently on my laptop ssh'd into a Unix server to run cadence)

Yes but that doesn't apply to tablets unless you use a bluetooth keyboard. At that point you have a laptop in a strange formfactor and an OS that isn't optimised for this particular usecase.

Yes. I was thinking more of devices like the one-port Macbook than tablets.