I have that Magic Keyboard and would love to have the option to run real Linux via https://getutm.app/. The iPad is fully capable of this, but it is a pain because you have to jailbreak it. Ugh.

Yeah, they should really unlock the virtualization capabilities. That IMO would make a lot of power users happy. I would love for them to also offer some sort of dual boot option for running macOS on bare metal but that's likely not going to happen.

I'd be happy enough with virtualization, at least then I could make proper use of the hardware.

I think it gets a particularly bad rap among software developers because in a lot of areas you can do actual work on an iPad, but programming is an area where it’s still absolute shit with no signs of ever changing.

It’s possible to do SwiftUI development on device now, but god forbid you’re doing anything other than that (or even SwiftUI but it’s a real Xcode project already) then the iPad is practicaly useless.