This makes a lot of sense. A hacker's computer is a very personal item. Most hackers will be in a situation where there is little distinction between the tools

This makes a lot of sense. A hacker's computer is a very personal item. Most hackers will be in a situation where there is little distinction between the tools they use at work and those they use at home. There's also likely to be many hours of customization spent on a machine in the form of shell startup scripts, defaults tweaks, browser extensions with userscripts, software licenses, text editor plugins, and a bunch of hand-compiled (or Homebrew) software. I take my personal MacBook Pro to work and back every day, despite it being a pain in the ass to lug around, because I can't imagine doing all the same tweaks, installs and settings on two machines. And I wouldn't feel comfortable with having my personal stuff on a machine owned by my employer either. So this seems like a great solution. And yeah, let's face it, we do like the shiny. You'd be none too pleased if you joined a new company and they gave you a scuffed old machine with the previous users sandwich still living under the keycaps, would you?