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Sure, for things that can use ssh keys it works great. This is how I connect to various git servers.
But in the case of this hack the services that were compromised were Amazon, Gmail, and iCloud web pages. All things that authenticate with user/password and not SSH keys.
How would SSH agent help here? They used social engineering at Amazon to get common account info, then further used social engineering to get the password reset on his Apple ID.
Once they had his Apple ID they logged into the iCloud service and issued remote wipes on all his devices that he had activated the wipe option on. Since he used the same credentials everywhere they were able to get into Twitter and Google as well.
As for loosing all his data, he should have had a backup. Apple makes this super easy on iOS using iCloud and on OS X using Time Machine.
You can get a Mac mini to use for around $600 and it works just fine for development.
Not sure if you are joking about the USB thing or not. You just plug the device into a USB port and then can run the debugger, profiling tools, packet capture and all that directly on the device.