Indeed, lack of a touch screen would be a deal breaker for me. The iPad is attractive, my kids have them, and I might convince one of them to let me use it for a week this summer to see if it handles basic things like Jupyter notebooks and talking to homemade hardware gadgets.
If you’re asking to use macOS with your fingers, you have not realized how terrible that would be. I do not mean in a desktop-OS is terrible for touch input. I mean in a macOS specifically is not built for fingers and would require so much work that Windows has been doing for a decade at this point.
It's not like Windows 10 is touch ready in any real sense, either. Windows 11 fixes some of the basic problems, but the gold standard for a desktop OS that's productively usable in tablet-only mode might ironically be GNOME on Linux.
What I do right now is typing with the keyboard and extensive use of the GUI with my fingers. So I'd still want at least a detachable keyboard, but also use it in full tablet mode. Among its uses, I'd read sheet music from it at band practice.
I tried. The limited software and lack of desktop OS made it painful. I wouldn't try it again, personally. It felt like an exercise in compromise after compromise after compromise.
