People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones

I have an 11" iPad and the screen still feels too small to use windowed apps. It gets very cramped very quickly.

I can't imagine trying to do that on an iPhone. Surely it's useless.

What this does do is reveal the fiction that "iPadOS" and "iOS" are separate. Clearly not.

It might not be super practical on the device display. But with external display and keyboard/mouse this becomes much more usable.

Honestly a dex competitor would really help keep me in the Apple ecosystem.

With the power of M-chips, this would cannabalize MacBooks via iPad Air / Pro. They are sitting on a golden cash flow and not willing to revolutionize computing again (as the iPhone did).

Just as a N=1, I would rather pay a recurring fee in the Disney-Netflix range to Apple to get more liberty in usage from my machines. But I think they don’t dare to go those routes, because they need the broad market base and cannot extract the current cash flow from a smaller base, while setting expectations that the Googles, Samsungs can copy.

Industry leaders dilemma. Apple currently settles on market differentiation via physical products.

Historically, cannibalizing has always been the right choice when it comes to such things. That was a major point of the first iPhone, that it was a full replacement for your iPod, which was instrumental in its success. All this thinking does is cloud ones judgement and let competitors succeed.

Not saying you are wrong, this may be the reason Apple operates nowadays, but I maintain it is shortsighted.