The best thing to do is hope that the MBP team addresses their major issues (keyboard, etc).
Edit: Looks like the new Pixelbook is actually a decent competitor!
Super stable and secure base OS with a modern linux kernel but with real vendor hardware support that is auto-updating and mostly immutable.
Then you have, out of the box with a single click, a debian container running inside a VM with full graphics integration and file integration. You can see your container's FS from the file manager and I can run wayland and X apps easily. Its also easy to run more containers via LXC.
more info: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/8c8ac04a...
This is news to me. How did it fail?
However I believe that the Pixelbook is not really aimed at being a mass market seller, it is more of a reference platform for Google's own work as well as a useful machine for their own development in their own special way. The original Chromebook Pixel was cast in this mould and the Pixelbook fills the same shoes.
So if success is Google having a machine they can use to develop ChromeOS and their many other products then I think the project is a success.
Personally I am waiting for them to come out with an 8th generation i7 version with suitable ability to run a linux container for a LAMP stack and IDE. Money is no object for the right tool for the job so price doesn't really matter if Pixelbook is the only computer really desired.
I wrote this on that previous 'failure' the original Chromebook Pixel. This may be five years old but there is no computer with better speakers, screen, keyboard, touchpad and aesthetic appeal. I believe the Pixelbook to be better but not entirely so, the speakers and keyboard 'can't' be better.