… except the Chromebook Pixel has a bigger screen with more pixels and higher DPI, a touchscreen, a faster processor, more RAM, a higher-resolution webcam, more ports, longer battery life, an OS with a better track record for security, and costs $300 less.
On second thought, the Pixel has almost nothing in common with the new Macbook. Especially not that janky gold finish.
Even the Apple nuts I work with are kind of scratching their heads over this one. I can understand the goal of ‘elegance’ with just one port, but that goal is thrown out the window when one has to plug in an adapter to make the thing useful.
Well, first off, the screen is gorgeous. After that, I find that I can do a lot more than ‘just run a browser’. That storage is available as a FS, you have a shell (crosh), and unlike Android, the browser actually has dev tools. So all the chromebooks, out of the box, make for nice development consoles (e.g. ssh’d to some server).
Beyond that, Google upstreamed all the chromebook spec drivers into kernel 3.7, so since then, you can run any distro on any chromebook, assuming the installer is capable.
So… that makes any chromebook a cheap Linux laptop; the Pixel just makes for a really nice one, especially for those of us who are sensitive to shitty screens.
