I can certainly understand a strong preference for one form factor or another but just because one can't personally relate to a particular form factor doesn't mean it doesn't have merit or should be laughed at. The fact of the matter is whichever camp any of us are in there clearly is a market for pure tablets, 2-in-1's, and clamshell laptops.
With Apple returning to their own silicon and the ability to run iOS apps on them in MacOS I would hope that sometime in the future Apple will explore the 2-in-1 market. Despite the fact that I'm not a fan of the Surface Pro lineup, I'd be interested in a MacOS device that. In the case of an Apple 2-in-1 where I think Apple can beat Microsoft is in the fact that they can leverage a huge library of applications that are designed for touch, despite the fact that the base operating system was not. That's really where I don't care for the Surface Pro lineup - there's a touch screen but I'm not necessarily going to use it a lot.
How Apple goes about it should they choose to do so I dont know. Personally I'm not interested in any wholesale change in UI of MacOS to support this although I do recognize that adjustment is inevitable.
I guess for me, I wouldn't want to see a merging, I'd like to see a bridging device. We're all different though.