Nothing is wrong: iPad is mostly a consumption device which does not show any development interface to the user. Compare it to a music player that does not expose any music creation interface.

This allows the maker of iPads to change the underlying implementation how they see fit, without making users notice anything. If iPads started to run a mickrokernel OS underneath, the UI / UX won't change at all.

The expensive parts of an iPad are the screen, the battery, the QA, and the brand. The CPU is not particularly expensive, though maybe isn't a $5 part.

The marketing line for the iPad pro is "like a computer. Unlike any computer"

For most of the people it's being marketed to, a computer is not a development system, either.

>Compare it to a music player that does not expose any music creation interface.

Okay, and if people were buying 4-figure Bang and Olufsen stereo systems and hooking up a 5-dollar cassette recorder as their music production system, I'd be perturbed by that as well.

If it's merely a consumption device, why attempt to develop on it? If it's a serious tool, why is the $5 component needed? Most of all - why don't you have a device that actually does what you want it to, properly, and why doesn't this bother you?

Is it just me, or do many Unix users get offended by any computing device that can’t run Unix?

Here’s Steve Jobs’ take: https://youtu.be/YfJ3QxJYsw8

Even for NeXT being an UNIX was more a way to bring in UNIX software, while competing against Sun than anything else.

The OS architecture, drivers being written in Objective-C, foundation frameworks had nothing UNIXy about them.

Hackers have plenty of great options for consumption devices but a lot of the time we just need better cyberdecks.

Nothing seems wrong to me. Your much more expensive new luxury car probably has a good deal of computing power without a useful Unix development environment. Same goes with your expensive new television.

Your expensive new car and new TV probably aren't being marketed as a replacement for your PC.

Your iPad isn’t marketed as a replacement for your PC in any context that would imply that you could easily run a Unix development environment. Seriously: I can’t imagine anyone who would be aware of Unix development environments who would also be under the impression that an iPad would be a good device for that purpose.

I agree; and yet, here we are, with people attempting exactly that and going to frankly ridiculous lengths to do so - apparently, in an earnest effort to do real work. How did we end up here?

Large majority of computer users are neither UNIX users, nor UNIX developers.

For them the iPad is indeed a replacement.

Well it's "like a computer unlike any computer"...

Not kidding when I say, they drink the Apple marketing.

Replace their oddity with something like a laptop or non iOS environment.

It's a Linux box with WiFi.