Given Apple have gone cellular with everything all the way down to the Watch, I’m always amazed they never included it in a Macbook.

I remember that Qualcomm licences their modems for an outrageous price if they're for a computer, that might be a reason they were never included. But I believe Apple will now manufacture their own cellular chips.

There’s a solid reason to have a cellular modem in a MacBook - data only plans. It’s cheaper in the US to buy a cellular plan addon for iPad than to pay for data as part of the main plan.

They expect you to have an iPhone; using that for cellular data is literally one click away.

You could make the same argument for the iPad. But they do sell cellular iPads.

In my experience, personal hotspot on my Macbook takes about 30 seconds to connect, and it sometimes just fails to connect altogether. It disconnects when I close my Macbook, so next time I open it I need to connect again. Sometimes my phone doesn't show up in the Wifi menu and I need to manually start hotspot mode on my iPhone.

I'd much prefer a built-in cellular modem.

I just moved away from windows because while the devices do everything they don't work properly.

I've now switched to a Mac Mini for a desktop and I use an 11" iPad Pro and apple pencil for everything that isn't code on the road.

I've got to the age where I'm not sitting hunched over a laptop working for half a day and there's not much point in having a laptop if it's going to be docked all day.

Why are you envious of Windows folks? Windows hardware is generally cheaper, so if you're using Macintosh, you could ostensibly afford Windows.

if your workflow depends on macOS then it doesn't matter how cheap windows is