It's a shame. A full desktop OS in iPad form factor is basically a holy grail.
There are many, many ways to acquisition that, just because apple won't let you do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Anything that can run linux with the KDE plasma desktop environment will, at very least, feel very familiar to OSX. You might have to seek out some app alternatives if you're doing something specific, but nowadays general desktop computing like you'd do on a laptop is well covered in most distros, and if you're looking for a place to start, Kubuntu is likely your best OOB experience.
Combine that with basically any windows native tablet computer, and you're off to the races. You'll likely have to play with some things to get it how you want it, but the nice thing about linux is you can play with those things.
So yes, the holy grail is here weary traveler.
I think MS got the closest to sort of addressing it with windows 8, but everyone simply defaulted to the desktop mode rather than the touch mode (didn't help that the windows store was/is incredibly poorly done).
This is why devices like the surface pro or other 2 in 1 devices never really seemed to work out. You are either harming the tablet experience or the keyboard experience.
This is really not the case with iPadOS though. It already works quite well with a touchpad and keyboard. The hardware is already there to control a full desktop OS, iPadOS already allows itself to be be controlled as if it’s a desktop OS, and with continuity mode, it’s already possible to control macOS via an iPad.
All of these things already work pretty well, and paint a pretty decent picture of what might be if Apple decided to go further.
Some things just work better on a touchscreen, even when they’re running on macOS. Some things just work better with a mouse and keyboard, even when they’re running on iPadOS.
As long as there’s some way to transition between them, I do really think a best-of-both-worlds option exists, because it’s mostly there already.
A holy grail you've been able to buy for 7 years; Microsoft Surface Book with detatchable screen. High quality hardware, beautiful screen, best touchpad on a Windows laptop I've used, but the removable screen to make it a tablet just ... isn't very useful.
It served as a overspec baby cam monitor for a few months but we had so many issues that the second time I went to reformat it, we replaced it.
I still primary use a laptop, but that is because I like the form of it. So I have no actual experience trying to survive with only iOS.
There are many places in the world where the availability of the internet is so spotty and so poor, that trying to use VNC to get work done would not be possible.
The only way to make VNC worse is to have to do it on a $1000 locked down tablet.
I'd bet that Apple is still shipping 5x-10x as many A-series iPads as M-series iPads.
I'd love to be able to run a more capable OS on an M-series iPad, but not if that means all the rest have a worse experience. Maybe Apple needs to release an iPadOS Pro to go along with the M-series chips?