In a few years, I speculate that 99% of people using macbooks will find themselves in areas with some sort of wifi access, and if that's not acceptable I find Clearwire's service to be excellent in the NYC metro area. The cellular networking would not have the same impact that it would have had 3 or 5 years ago.
Panera introduced free wifi in 2005. Starbucks introduced free wifi in 2010. Nowadays pretty much every coffeeshop IN THE US offers free wifi. There's demonstrable progress and the pace is picking up.
EDIT: added clarification that I was referring to the US.
There's progress, but we're a very, very long way from ubiquitous WiFi. With more and more users moving towards cellular usage anyways (tablets and phones), and away from laptops, the pressure to get WiFi everywhere is slackening.
When I was visiting family in Vancouver over Xmas - a modern, large city by any measure - I had no data plan (I'm US-based), and for the first time in a long time found myself looking for WiFi everywhere I went. Let's just say that the availability of WiFi in public spaces is still very limited.
I intended to make the claim for the United States, forgetting that not everyone here is based in the US :/ Updated parent reply to reflect that I intended to mean United States.
I've lived in Seattle, SF, and NYC, and the same can be said for all of them. WiFi is not at all ubiquitous. There are destinations with reliable(ish) WiFi, but it is a ludicrously long way from having something handy wherever you might decide to plop your butt down for a few minutes.
And it's not getting better - not when connectivity has been moving heavily towards cellular rather than WiFi. The pressure for coffee shops, restaurants, and public spaces to get WiFi was largely fueled by an explosion in laptop usage - that usage has, and continues to, rapidly disappear into phones.
FYI, Vancouver is pretty like any American city. Speaks English, has tall buildings, has a subway system, has running water, and a conspicuous absence of igloos ;) Please don't take "not in the US" to mean "underdeveloped".
Officially Starbucks has free WiFi, but in my experience it's down more often than it's up. I don't do much travelling, so this is very Toronto centric, but most free WiFi just doesn't work.
