One of my favorite apps when it comes to the keyboard is Blink. It’s an SSH/Mosh client with a limited local shell. I use it to build a Jekyll site on an EC2 instance. Blink supports multi-monitor, so I can have different shells on different screens.
Multi-window in iOS 13 is going to be another game changer. This is the best device I’ve owned and I’m excited about what’s to come.
If you often do carry it (without the other gear), then I can maybe see it, though you can buy a used small thinkpad that can easily run the terminal programs.
Several years back I used my iPad remoting in to my desktop exclusively for about half of the year. There are terrible ways, mediocre ways, and good ways to simulate mouse input with a touch screen. The critical difference between touch and mouse is that a mouse can precisely hit much smaller UI parts (which, a lot of people are going to have trouble seeing anyways.) The Apple Pencil effectively does this — though not with the keyboard mouse pairing most are used to.
I’ve been using Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro for quite a while. Their iOS app is a 1:1 UI port from their desktop app. The app is basically Photoshop for illustrators and painters. It works way better than I would have predicted. Without the Apple Pencil, I don’t think the UI would be usable, but the Apple Pencil is the primary input device for the artist.
I’m expecting the iPad to behave very much like a desktop/laptop soon. My bigger concern is all of the software charging by subscription, which is a lot easier to implement with iOS than MacOS/Windows/Linux (kind of ironic that the unsustainable 99 cent price points makes subscription the only viable revenue model.)
Which a Chromebook could do. Which your phone could do.
Which any of those laptops from 2002 could do.
When I was given my iPad I didn't want to buy a keyboard case. But sometimes I need a keyboard. I happened to have an extra Apple Wireless Keyboard, and it works fantastically. Wireless. Full-sized. And it's only slightly larger than the 9" iPad. I just throw them both in my bag.
My point is the only way iPadOS can displace laptops is to be a laptop. Not this tablet-stand bullshit.
So an iOS/iPadOS laptop with full KVM support always seemed like a no-brainer in my mind. Or at least a much more obvious move than MacOS/ARM (which would split a small ecosystem behind the only logic that "they did it before and it worked out".) Plus 'the future' is obviously iOS.