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Comment by fatbird | Hacker News Reader

Coders obviously can't use this machine.

I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted. Brackets is an HTML5 based IDE that's currently targeting the web development set, but could easily branch out (like any text editor) into being a good editor for any language, and is built to work in a browser. Make the remote repository for you code a bunch of files by SFTP, using SSH for commands, and you have a remote IDE for any development process, including eventually a debugger.

How many breathless stories have been linked here about dudes in Oregon pedaling their mountain bike out into the forest and setting up their iPad 3 and Zagg keyboard, and using their LTE connection to do remote dev? Same thing for the Chromebook.

I didn't downvote you, but are you seriously suggesting that all you need for arbitrary development is a nice-looking, syntax-highlighting text editor? Leaving aside the fact that Brackets itself is relatively immature.

It may work if you use SSH, as others have mentioned, but that still restricts your use case and that's not what you implied at first.

I was reacting to "coders obviously can't use this machine" because coders, with SSH and a nice IDE that fits into the environment, obviously can use this machine. As others have observed, you're not buying this for the processor, you're buying it for the large, high-res touchscreen, aluminum body, built-in LTE, and light weight. If you want raw CPU and hard drive space, you'll get a Mac. I don't think screen-and-body is an invalid reason, either, to pay a premium. When you use a tool all day, the surface quality, the experiential quality, makes a difference. I've never really understood being cheap with something that you're going to look at and touch 6-10 hours a day for 3-4 years, on average.

That said, yes, brackets is immature, but fairly brightly points to a future where a browser OS like ChromeOS is more than sufficient for a really wide variety of use-cases.

Do you realise how completely ridiculous and illogical you sound ?

  > I've never really understood being cheap with something that you're going to look at and touch 6-10 hours a day for 3-4 years, on average.

So if that is the case why on earth would you buy a laptop that doesn't do anything ? Why wouldn't you spend the few hundred more and get a MacBook Pro that runs Eclipse, Sublime, Visual Studio, Photoshop, Office etc.

You can do all that in the browser or via remote desktop to a server or desktop. Eclipse Orion works in the browser (as do several other IDEs such as cloud9). Office works in the browser (but I prefer Google Docs).

For simple image editing, I just use pixlr.com. If I really needed advanced features from photoshop (or gimp), I can A) remote connect to a desktop or B) boot to ubuntu from a flash drive.

If you need Visual Studio and don't have access to a desktop computer you can remote connect to, then yes, don't buy a chromebook.

Or of course if you are developing native iphone/ipad apps (i.e., not phonegap, etc.) and don't have access to a mac computer, then yes, of course, get a macbook instead of a chromebook.

Probably because you're basing your argument on a bunch of things that don't exist, to justify a product that will take $1,300 out of your bank account today, not 3-5 years from now when it might be useful.

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