For some things, you need a tablet ("LOL what could that possibly be?" Oh, I dunno, does your laptop have multiple very-high-quality cameras built-in with all kind of fancy depth-sensors and AR-related hardware, an accelerometer, et c.? GPS and/or cell radio? Touch & drawing input? Stupid-high idle battery life, with near-instant-on from any level of sleep? Sure, some have some of that, but how many have all, especially without peripherals? How comfortable is it to use while standing, or while walking around? How good's your laptop at replacing a scanner? Reading PDFs or ebooks while on the go?)
The more things i-devices can do well-enough that were previously desktop- or laptop-only means more times you don't need to have both devices to be able to do all the things you want to do.
It's harder to go the other way (making laptops/desktops good at the things tablets are good at—most of those require adding more, expensive hardware, and changing or hybridizing the form factor) so the trend is in the direction of making tablets more and more capable.
It wouldn't be such a concerning trend if Apple was simply a really good hardware vendor. Instead, the iPad is a toll-road with a 30% tax that goes straight to Apple. If they gave iOS alternate app stores or even just opened the iPad bootloader (as we know is fully possible on M1), people wouldn't be shifting in their seats as much. Instead, Apple is innovating in one hand and extorting in the other, and then pretending like both can't exist without the other.
There isn't a company in the world that has a larger R&D budget than Apple. If $200 billion dollars in liquid funding can't design a decent, freedom respecting tablet, then Apple hasn't fixed much of anything (in my opinion).
Field editing, showing clients live renders as they give you suggestions for edits, being able to grab the ipad and work on some ideas while on the go.
All of these comments "why use ipad instead of Macbook to do x" has been answered a long time ago. The massive market sale through rate for the ipad ecosystem answers the justification better than anyone on this site can answer.
Same for the Lightroom/Photoshop on iPad folks - why use lightroom on ipad? so you can do it on the go without opening up your macbook. And use the pencil.
Steven Soderbergh has edited full feature films on a flight and I wouldn't be surprised to see him attempt to color grade them as well. Of course he's better as Steven than Peter Andrews so who knows what quality his color pseudonym would be.
