Despite having a CC licence and the latest top of the range 15" Retina MacBook pro I still haven't installed Lightroom on my system because it's far too cumbersome to deal with my 200GB+ of photos.
How much experience do you have with Lightroom? To me it almost sounds like, "I don't like spinach. No, I've never tried spinach."
I don't understand how anyone could conceive of using a program like that on an iPad, even if it only uses the smaller offline versions of the images. The screen real-estate of the iPad wouldn't be enough for Lightroom's complex interface for a start.
1.) Due to the mobile nature of everything at hand, I don't think this is aimed at manipulating a career's worth of photos. Wrong tool for the job. It's going to be better suited for smaller catalogs. Like, I just traveled out of town for a wedding, now I'm on the train heading home and I want to start making selects, rejecting, keywording and light adjustments in the meantime. Do I need a laptop for this process?
2.) Yes, the LR interface could definitely be seen as a little bulky. (I thought so too, when migrating from Aperture.) But almost all of those panels in the "complex interface" can be hidden. Attached is a full-screen screenshot of a catalog I'm going through right now Of course you could still hide the right-hand panel as well.
Simply doesn't sound like this is for you. That's quite alright since not everyone's workflow is the same. But I can see this being a pretty powerful and valuable tool for a LOT of photographers. People for whom the pros far outweigh the cons.