I’m beginning to think I’ve joined the wrong forum here… 
Just for some balance, I’m one of those “insane” people. Or maybe “insane” adjacent: I use my iPad 95% of the time. (I know, I’ve written this elsewhere, and it seems I’m possessed by a masochistic drive to present a contrary voice whenever this topic comes up…).
I’m a writer, freelance educator and facilitator. Up until recently, I was a poetry professor. I’m also the artistic director for a self-elective poetry workshop programme, and an editor. So I write and edit things, handle research, manage projects (email, task management, CRM , scheduling etc), manage finances and budgets and do many of the other functions you might associate with the above roles. It’s all “real” work. Not just consumption. And I’m no blogger or influencer trying to build an audience off the back of a romanticised vision of an iPad-dominant working life.
I’m not stubbornly iOS exclusive. I have a couple of old Mac Minis and a 2016 MacBook— legacy machines. I used to be a full-tilt macOS kinda guy, but so much of what I was doing at one point was on the road that I sought a trade off between portability, ease of use and processing power. I benefit from the mobility and flexible form factor that iPads offer.
My current iPad inventory: a 12.9” 3rd gen, an 11” 3rd gen, and a 5th gen Mini. The 11” was my daily driver, and the Mini was really useful to have in hand through meetings and workshop sessions. I picked up the 12.9 from eBay during lockdown when I decided I needed some more screen space while working from home.
I use a Corne mechanical keyboard (split ergo) and generally stay away from keyboard cases. I’ve tried a mouse with iOS once, and it’s cool to know I can do that, but that’s not part of my set-up. I like my tablet to be a tablet, and I’m under no illusions of it being a laptop replacement. I use a generic Apple Pencil alternative when I need to do anything that demands precise fine grain control.
I have a background in web development, though I haven’t been keeping up with that at all (my personal site is woefully overdue an update…). I also dabble with a bit of creative coding, though again it’s been a little while. I’ll probably fire up one of the macOS machines when I get back to either of those. The other main reason I’d go back to a Mac would be hardcore file management— I’ve got a dud HD that I’ve been meaning to attempt to retrieve files from. That said, I haven’t powered up any of my Mac machines thus far this year.
I’m no apologist for iOS. Text selection and file management can be painful. Aggressive memory management is also painful, which raises another point: being an iPad Power User (ahem), you’d think I’d be first in line for a fully specced, top-o’-the-line M1 with all the RAM, but hey— my tech budget has limits, and I try to be responsible. And I don’t get to test out all the hot new PKM tools at launch because so many of them don’t work well in mobile Safari, or don’t have equivalent iOS apps. I’m a Notion user, but it’s taken a long time for them to get anywhere near feature parity on iOS, and they’re not even all the way there yet (though the latest update for text selection was welcome). Don’t even get me started about my love/hate relationship with Shortcuts. And I’m looking out for the day when I’ll be able do more with an iPad and an attached monitor than simply mirror with a restrictive screen ratio…
I first tried working exclusively on a first gen iPad. Whatever MacBook I was working with at the time died, and the iPad was all I had while waiting for a replacement. It was a terrible experience. But it didn’t turn me away from tablet computing entirely. I got back to it with the 9.7” Pro, and haven’t looked back since.