The UI of a 2010 iPad could replace your laptop on trips. If you just need a device to occasionally keep tabs on email and review photos and bring up websites, the iPad has always been great for that.
If you need to do anything more intense, the one device you bring really should be a laptop, especially as we become able to engineer laptops that are increasingly small and light.
I don't think it's possible to develop a UI that is both as capable as a traditional computer and as simple and intuitive as early versions of iOS. The more actions you add, the harder any action is to discover.
I would love an OS X tablet, and I'm looking into making a Hackintosh one (it can be done). But it's not going to be an iPad, just like an iPad in a laptop case isn't a laptop.
It's pretty amusing that IOS and Android are likely the reason that it's the year 2020 and "people who are not familiar with computing" still exist.
I wholly disagree, at least at the beginning. When the original iPad was released, I remember seeing multiple viral videos of two-year-olds being given iPads and instantly figuring out how to use them. At the time, this was surprising.
I think we've forgotten just how simple iOS was in the Steve Jobs era. You had a grid of objects, and when you tapped an opbject, your device became that object until you transformed it back with the home button. There was no control center, no notification center, and no app switcher—even when Apple added "multitasking" in iOS 4, it took the form of a little bar, not a new view.
I'm not ready to say Apple should get rid of Notification Center, because it's pretty darn useful. But I would like a single kill switch in Settings which turns all these features off. Then I could enable it for my grandmother.
The iPad, for its part, should be simpler than the iPhone, because simplicity is the iPad's reason for existence. Laptops exist because they are (and continue to be) the most efficient way to get things done. The iPhone exists because it's a relatively capable device that fits in your pocket.
And the iPad exists so you can browse the web and watch Netflix in a focused and leisurely way. iPads also make these tasks accessible for people who are not familiar with computing and will be more comfortable a simpler environment.
By attempting to make the iPad as capable as a laptop, Apple is taking away the iPad's very real original use-case in service of a use-cases for which the iPad is inherently ill-suited. And for what? To compete with a class of product which Apple already makes?
2010 iPads were great at what they did, and 2010 Macs were great at what they did. I legitimately don't understand why 2020 Apple is now on a mission to conflate these two product lines. Even if Apple succeeds at making the iPad as capable as a Mac, what will all their work have accomplished?