Many (most?) people don't have the luxury of two development machines. If I could have two, I'd probably get a laptop and a desktop too. But if I can only have one, then I'll take the laptop.
I have that luxury but the next round I’ll just get one powerful laptop and a great screen instead.
It’s way too much work syncing workspaces, repos, configuration, installed software, etc.
You can use a laptop as a desktop, but not the other way around.
The option to work anywhere is nice, I have a dock that I just plug one cable into my macbook and the entire setup lights up and is ready to go. But sometimes i want to work from the living room, or work at a coffee shop etc. and all i have to do to enable that is just unplug that cable and put my laptop in my bag. It's some pretty nice freedom to be able to do that.
Apparently, this is an area where if I'm not in the actual minority, I'm certainly in the quieter faction.