In those cases where you know that you’ll need to connect your ipad to a tv, I presume the apple and the android is about the same.
And, yes, since it’s a minihdmi, it’s not quite as easy as I imagined. But buying an extra cord is only $3-$4, stick an adapter in your glove compartment, and you have the advantage. I can imagine people doing that.
But the advantage isn’t quite as clear.
Apple has traditionally failed (or been worse) on the connectivity front. I have a super cheap mp3 player I bought a couple years ago. Cost less than $50. With my cheap mp3 player, I could transfer the mp3s directly to someone elses computer using a standard usb to miniusb cord. And did that a couple times. Really super easy. The person I was transferring to had apple stuff. he could not transfer his mp3s from his ipod to my computer. This isn’t directly relevant to the ipad (that I know of) but it points to the weakness of apple products in general in transferring data from the apple product to a nonapple system.
Your complaint about Apple's "fail[ure] ... on the connectivity front" amounts to the fact that iPods don't facilitate pirating tracks, and that is by design. That is why it is Apple, and not the maker of your cheap MP3 player, that was able to get the record labels on board and sell tracks legally online.
At one time Macs came with a bunch of ports, Apple Desktop Bus, AppleTalk and SCSI. Apple made a lot of people mad by dumping all of that for this new-fangled port called "USB." And then Apple dumped the almighty floppy drive, causing conniptions. Did you know no Apple product has shipped with a VGA port for years? Seriously limited connectivity.