It's incredibly annoying that I can't make a phone call with my cellular equipped iPad.

This prevents me from buying an iPad mini.

it is incredibly stupid that they did this, but i guess it does force you to buy both an iPad and iPhone?

Everyone still has a phone, and it doesn't force me to buy an Apple phone, it just means the iPad is worth less to me. I'm left stuffing around with Skype or some other horrible voip system because Apple don't like the look of a phone icon on an iPad -- even if you're using AirPods!

Apple could probably build an iPhone/iPad with an M1 CPU and allow you to 'do it all' on the single device.

I really hope one day my phone can also be my day-to-day computer. That would be so cool!

Well, iGoggles are coming soon.