Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Even though it's not designed to" It is designed to, though. That's the thing. The line is arbitrarily drawn at not getting CLI/root access to your iPad. His point is that over the years, Apple has blurred that line a lot. You can use keyboards and mice. You can do all your daily computing on an iPad - email, spreadsheets, YouTube, whatever. But it's still locked down, for whatever reason, despite being a perfectly…
He says in the article that "But even if I could somehow get macOS running on my iPad Pro, would that resolve this tension? I don't think so. A tablet lacks a keyboard and trackpad and even if I buy models designed for the iPad, tablets are all about push, poke, and drag." So in the end, even if he could get CLI/Root access to his iPad it wouldn't matter anyway because of their perceived quality of the iPad accessory…
So sure it contains an M2, but it’s also a fanless device that combines its entire componentry, including the screen, into a package that is just a few mm thick. On top of that it also has a much smaller battery.
That kind of heat envelope makes it suitable for burst work, but poor for enduring workloads. Unlike the Mac it’s not going to allow limitless multitasking while exporting video and other processor heavy tasks. This hardware limitation is recognised in the types of software that the device runs competently.
So I partly blame Apple’s marketing, but I also think caveat emptor - why would the buyer assume that all of these other Mac shapes and sizes exist if they can actually all be squeezed into a 5mm thick enclosure.