It me is seems Apple thought the iPad would be the way of the future, not for everyone, but for most. Jobs compared Mac’s to trucks, while most people would be well served by a car (iPad).
This was a bold prediction, but not completely unreasonable. A lot of people these days use their phone as their primary computing device, in many developing countries, the phone is likely their only device. If this is serving so many well, it isn’t crazy to think people would want a larger version of that for doing more involved tasks.
However, phones themselves got bigger, and the iPad fell into this place where it wasn’t as convenient as a phone, but not better or different enough to make it worth moving to from a phone.
The addition of all the laptop-like features to the iPad was Apple’s slow realization that its place in the market didn’t make as much sense when devices like the iPhone Pro Max exist.
I know some people who absolutely love their iPads, though I was never one of them, despite many attempts. So it seems they have their place, it’s just not as widely adopted as initially predicted (at least not yet).
As phones have grown and the iPad and MacBook line has been blurred, I think Apple needs to evaluate where the iPad fits in the lineup and what it should be to make it better than both a phone and a laptop at some things that customers care about and make that definition clear. It could be that adding laptop features to the iPad was a mistake, maybe that was Apple forgetting what the device was and caving to what people wanted it to be… but it doesn’t seem like it will ever be what people want until it runs full macOS without being locked into the App Store.
Carving out a new category isn’t easy. Apple wasn’t the first to try to make the tablet happen, they were just the most successful. But it seems it’s a category that’s still trying to figure out what it is. I don’t think I’d frame that as gaslighting, as the article tries to do.