Am I missing something here, or did they build a machine that even their own developers cannot use? When you go to the Google campus, will everyone still be toting around a Macbook?
Many of their developers use Chromebooks, I believe. Code is not allowed to be stored locally on mobile devices so they use Chromebooks and SSH (or any other laptop and SSH).
Additionally, I think that going forward on-site interviews at Google will use Chromebooks to type code up, rather than white-boarding (which makes me sad, but I suspect will make all the people who hate white-boarding a lot happier).
Interesting. I could not give up my IDE.
That pretty much explains the Pixel then.
And this is why I am always suspicious of an IDE. This sounds like a really nice way to talk to a Linode to develop on.
Google engineers are not actually allowed to write code locally on those laptops. The macbooks are only used when hanging out around campus to view email and ssh into workstations (linux desktops) where actual work is done. That same thing can be done from chromebooks.