In response to Jason's comment (reproduced below), I've decided to write up a quick first-impressions of the Pixelbook.
@matigo
> November 3rd 2017 9:35:23 pm
> @kyle nice. I’ve heard a lot of positive things about the PixelBook. Well … aside from the price. A lot of people seem to expect anything from Google to be “free” ?
Funny story: I almost never buy brand new hardware (as in, I rarely pre-order things or want new hardware before it comes out). As I was figuring out that my current setup (an N22 running Debian sid) wasn't quite what I needed, the pixelbook turned out to be the exact machine I (thought I) wanted. I basically followed Kenn White's post "My $169 development Chromebook", though at a cool grand, this doesn't exactly fit the "cheap enough that should it get lost/stolen/damaged, I wouldn't lose too much sleep" description in his post.
So yeah, it's expensive: about 150 USD more than an equivalent XPS-13 (I have one of those, too, that is mostly unused), plus another 100 USD for the stylus. But, my XPS-13 isn't convertible and I use it in that mode about half the time. One of the things that concerns me the most with new laptops is the keyboard, and while this isn't the best, it's certainly good. Plus, I don't have to dick around with Linux, I get a lot of security benefits, and I can still be productive.
It's not perfect; there's still a few things I wish I had on here that I haven't gotten working yet: Racket and/or Common Lisp (okay, I'd even settle for Clojure early on), Tensorflow, and Processing. I do have Python 3, Go 1.9.2, and Rust 1.20.0. I also wish I could get emacs as a first class citizen at the top level. Some form of virtualisation or containerisation would ameliorate pretty much all of these: a single VM or container with an Ubuntu VM that I can SSH into from the Secure Shell with a proper development environment would be acceptable. It looks like some kind of containers or VM support is coming, so there's time.
One of the first questions that I got was "why ChromeOS and why not a macbook?" It comes down to a few things, most notably missing is price (the equivalent macbook air seems to be the same price).
- I wanted a convertible (the so-called "2-in-1" form factor).
- From what I can tell on my Macbook Air and Pro, I feel like there's a declining quality and lack of QA in Apple's desktop releases lately. Hot take, maybe, but it's my wallet.
- I'm currently in the middle of the Udacity AI nanodegree, and having the Udacity app so I can download the lessons and quizzes for my (often) craptastic network connection. Bonus: it turns out the Android version of the Udacity app is significantly better than the iOS version, which came as no small surprise to me.
- Stylus support in tablet mode is great.
- I like having an escape key.
- I'll take Linux over OS X most days.
Currently, I'm able to do my class work; I edit code in Caret, I can run my homework and labs in an SSH session to Termux, I can watch videos offline with the Udacity app, and I can read relevant papers and AIMA. That's what I need (and what I need to focus on) for the near future, which gives time for improvements to come. I haven't even really touched on the Google Assistant integration, mostly due to a slight sense of being creeped out by giving Google that much data.