I made the choice between the exact same devices. I chose 10.5" Pro. So far...very happy with my choice. My 2015 rMB now sits at home waiting to be accessed remotely in the case I need to use it.
And I haven't even tried the iOS 11 beta yet. The first public beta is going on here though!
One thing I am noticing only now because I just read it on here in a different thread. I no longer have the annoying problem with a finger that inadvertendtly touches the screen while typing with the ASK. Thus was a very annoying issue I had with the 9.7" Pro when I owned that one. The extra few mm of depth to the 10.5" ASK really makes a difference, as does the minute adjustments to key size and spacing.
The only thing as far as keyboard that still gets me a little bit is the way iOS handles external keyboards when switching between languages. I got the Swedish keyboard because Swedish is the language of my customers and I use it professionally about 75% of the time. BUT, when your switch to English for the purposes of spell check and auto-correct, it behaves like you are using the on screen keyboard and switched layouts and everything.
If I weren't American, this would be a complete nightmare, because I would have no idea where semicolon, quotation mark, slash, etc would be on the keyboard. As it is I can figure it out pretty quick basically from long learned muscle memory earlier in life, but why can't there be static keyboard layout regardless of language chosen if an external keyboard is detected? Like macOS...
Everything else has been totally and surprisingly easy to do and figure out, and I have found workflows for 99% of the things I do that easily equal or surpass effectiveness and productivity of using a macOS laptop.
I have even found a decent video editing alternative, LumaFusion, that will be able to take care of most of my video editing needs, will probably just need FCX for a few key things that are missing at the moment.
On the other hand it is all about attitude. I had the same experience when switching over from Excel to Numbers. I made the decision that I was going to learn Numbers several years ago and forced myself to use it for everything instead. Before I had only seen problems. This time I told myself I would see opportunities and solutions. When I went in with that attitude, I found everything was much less problematic and solutions came much easier.
Had the same experience thus far transitioning to iOS. With an open mind things begin to get much easier. For example, having two word docs open at once in split view. You can do this easily if you use Dropbox or Documents as a file viewer, and you can even copy and paste from these app viewers into the active Word doc. When Drag and Drop comes with iOS 11 this will be even better. This works for most all normal office productivity file types.
80/20 split screen is much more productive than I thought it would be. Especially communicating apps like Mail, iMessage, etc, or file management apps like Dropbox or Documents. Eliminates tons of app switching, while the main app stays in focus and has plenty of room.
The funny thing is, my iPad mini also seems like it has gotten a new lease on life as well. Learning iOS's productivity capabilities has made even the mini lots more useful. I used to just use it one app at a time, but since getting the 10.5" Pro, I have been using a lot of 80/20 split screen with PiP video going at the same time, etc. and been able and much more comfortable doing a lot of professional stuff on it during a train commute for example, I would have automatically pulled out the rMB for previously.
Really appreciate the capability and ease of use proposition iOS brings to the table much more than I did before. And if all else fails, just have to fire up Screens or Jump Desktop and I'be got a traditional laptop/desktop OS at my disposal as well...
