[tomsem]

I get what you are saying, and agree that the iPad is not a laptop replacement.

Apple seems uninterested in producing a 'hybrid' device, but I think that has less to do with what their customers might be interested in, and more about the fact that they still want to sell laptops and desktops, often to the same people.

But they are positioning iPad Pro against hybrid devices like Surface Book, which arguably is a laptop replacement. And the only way that story holds up at all is if you can at least sometimes type on a physical keyboard, and do a few more things with keyboard shortcuts.

More and more, I'm using my iPad with a keyboard. And at least for me, it lets me do more things with it, far more efficiently than when using touch alone, and even as well as I can do with a laptop in some cases. It is more of a 'laptop displacement' rather than a 'replacement'.

When I'm using it as a reading device, I prefer not to hold it with my hands for extended periods of time. I'll have it propped up on a table or desk. And when I've got a keyboard paired, it would be more natural and ergonomic to press an arrow key to turn pages. But I have not discovered a single reading app for iOS that support even this minimal keyboard navigation (many Android reading apps support it), to say nothing of what keyboard shortcuts could add (initiate search, change text size, switch to a different book, etc.).