Your hope is unrealistic. Check out what is Windows 8 and how it failed.
Windows 8 failed because Microsoft made it a tablet-first OS on
machines that were not tablets, and they did it without having any sort of tablet software ecosystem in place. They build an OS that was chasing after apps that they believed they could wish into existence, giving the OS a reason to exist.
I still remember the first time I booted up Windows 8 on my desktop and that horrid full-screen start menu full of giant tiles popped up to cover my entire screen. It was lunacy.
There is simply no comparison with the iPad, because the iPad already
has the app ecosystem Microsoft always dreamed of. Suggesting that a more advanced iPad would fail because Windows 8 failed is just silly. Windows 8 failed because Microsoft build a playground no one wanted to play in and then forced it on everyone no matter how contextually inappropriate it was.
A lot of us don't want "macOS on iPad" we want "an iPad that works without a million ridiculous and arbitrary limitations."
Consider this. The 12.9" iPad Pro has literally the same internals as the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, mini, and new iMac. Same CPU package, same RAM, same everything.
So, let's say I spend $2k+ on an iPad Pro, right? And it's awesome! And I love it! But then I realize that Scrivener for the iPad is just a pale imitation of Scrivener on the Mac, because of limitations inherent in iPad OS, and I can't do my work, maybe at all or maybe without jumping through a lot of ridiculous, arbitrary hoops.
In response, I put my $2k+ iPad Pro aside in frustration and pick up my MacBook Air that cost almost
half as much, even though it has literally the same internals as the iPad, in order to accomplish a simple task that Apple has decided to make arbitrarily hard or impossible for the sole purpose of forcing me to buy the MacBook Air in the first place.
Apple -- and many of the people here -- say, "Well, buy both. Or just buy one or the other."
To which I and many others say, that's absurd. You've given me two devices that are functionally identical and yet you won't let me use one of them to its potential because of reasons no one can ever quite elucidate beyond, "Because they don't want you to."
The iPad Pro is capable of doing anything a Mac is
and more, but Apple kneecaps it, charges
more for it, and tells us it's for our own good.
What Apple is actually saying: "Oh, you need more functionality? Well, we
could unlock that functionality on the device you already own, but we'd rather sell you this
identical device in a slightly different physical enclosure that doesn't suffer from the limitations we impose on the one you bought!"
There is no reason at all the iPad Pro couldn't run the full version of any piece of Mac software at this point except that Apple has decided that they'd rather sell me two expensive devices instead of one. That's it, end of story, full stop. And they'll do it while patting themselves on the back about how green and environmentally responsible they are, to boot.
Ask yourself this: if it's okay to run iOS and iPad OS apps on the Mac, why not the other way around? If I've got an M1 with 16GB of RAM, what difference should it make whether it's enclosed inside an iPad or a MacBook?
Of course, I'm not angry at Apple about it. They don't owe me a device that makes logical sense or is better for the environment. But I'm not going to pretend they're not full of crap, either.
