I don't think I could disagree with the author more, and I am coming from the perspective of someone who also bought a pixel. (Actually we agree there, it is the best put together machine I've ever used... more on that later.)

I'm not running ChromeOS on my pixel right now. I tried it for a weekend, it wasn't my cup of tea, and I slapped Debian onto it instead. No big surprise there, I have different needs from most computer users. I want a web browser, a tiling window manager, and a metric fuckton of urxvt's on my screen at once... it doesn't surprise or concern me that I didn't like ChromeOS. I also don't like OSX and Windows 7/8; clearly I have minority interests.

Who is the target user of these systems then? Well, I may not like OSX or Windows, but I certainly understand at least a segment of their market. If my mother asks me for an opinion on what computer to get, I'm going to tell her to get a mac, or to stick with the windows Thinkpads she's traditionally gotten. Either of those are great for her, great for browsing the web, watching videos, and viewing pictures from her camera. Now, as I understand the marketing materials, this should make ChromeOS (probably not the pixel, considering the cost, but ChromeOS) a perfect choice for her. I wouldn't even consider recommending ChromeOS to her though, the reality of ChromeOS does not seem to fit the marketing materials or the author of this article's described reality.

I tried browsing pictures from my phone on it. My android phone. Fucking awful experience. All of the shine but none of the grace of OSX. Wasted screen-space everywhere, piss-poor file navigation, the works. Alright then, how about watching some videos? Plug in my portable harddrive only to discover that the video player on the thing has all the codec/container support of a bargain-brand smart-tv from 2007. My stock android phone does video a thousand times better than this shit. Fine, maybe I was expecting too much of the default video player. I don't expect my preferred mplayer to be available, but my brothers got my mother hooked on VLC a few years ago. Can I try that? Hahahaha no, what was I thinking? Alright, alright, what about webbrowsing? Well I guess it works exactly as you would expect. You open chrome and browse the web... nothing to complain about, nothing to get excited about. So score one for ChromeOS I guess?

The Pixel's hardware though.. my god it is fantastic. Well, aside from the absurdly tiny harddrive which would cripple any offline user with usage patterns terribly dissimilar from mine (for example: my mother). And aside from the uninspired RAM and processor offering... Those are not big complaints though, those failings don't represent significant technical challenges. They are things that could easily be fixed in the next revision. If those things are resolved the next generation of Pixel could be a serious contender, as a piece of hardware, to any of Apple's offerings. They just don't have the software to do it though. If this ChromeOS crap does end up taking off in a few years it will be despite the current state of affairs, much like Android's current popularity is despite the abysmal quality of earlier versions. The market for desktop OS's is entirely different from the 2007-era smartphone market though; ChromeOS isn't "that thing you use if your executives shit their pants when the iPhone was unveiled."

Who would I recommend a pixel to? Nobody... nobody except for a very small list of users that I know have usage patterns very similar to my own (and to them I could not recommend the computer strongly enough). This could easily be fixed though. Their hardware could have a future for itself.

Who would I recommend ChromeOS to, with any imaginable hardware? I honestly have no idea, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.