John Gruber on preferring a Mac to iPad:
I think I’m more productive on a Mac than I am on an iPad. I can’t prove it, but even if I’m wrong, the fact that I feel like it’s true matters. I always feel slightly hamstrung working on an iPad. I never do on a Mac (at least once I’ve got it configured with all the apps and little shortcuts, scripts, and utilities I use).
The word you are looking for is “familiarity”. That feeling of being hamstrung on an iPad is not because of the device, but because it requires a mental shift to working in a way you are unfamiliar. Millions of people get a lot of shit done on Windows everyday, but I bet Gruber (or any other dedicated Mac user) would feel hamstrung on Windows. That’s not to say Windows and iOS are similar, but that they both differ from macOS in a way that causes you to have to think, erm, differently about how you compute.