Well, they have the iPad Pro with keyboard cover already. Who's to say that they couldn't make that into an actual laptop product, replacing their lower-end mac

Well, they have the iPad Pro with keyboard cover already. Who's to say that they couldn't make that into an actual laptop product, replacing their lower-end macOS devices? Also, none of your quotes mention the impossibility of making an iOS device with yet another different form factor. It merely says that they won't merge the two OSes. Plus, even if that weren't the case, it wouldn't be the first time that Apple went back on a public statement while rebranding the backtracking as the invention of a whole new computing paradigm.