Personally I consider a computer "real" if you can use it to write its own software. Until you can actually develop iOS apps on iOS, it will just be a toy.

Wrote some code on an iPad this morning on my way to work.

Never again. It's not even a question of the software being that of a glorified phone.

Even using a 3rd party code editor with its software 'coding keyboard' it was an exercise in inefficiency and anti-ergonomics. So by the time you've added a Bluetooth keyboard, you've effectively got yourself a ramshackle laptop that isn't quite as useful as an actual laptop.

This is the problem with the iPad, on a fundamental level, for me.

It's not a laptop, because it's missing crucial laptop features (ability to do work on it). And it's not a phone because it's missing crucial phone features (portability and calls).

So when mine broke, I just didn't feel it was worth replacing. I've lost no value from not having an iPad, because everything it did could also be done on something else I own.

A "general purpose" computer that will execute any appropriately compiled binary no questions asked.

Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's essay "The coming war on general-purpose computing".

https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html