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Noah’s on my radar because of this post he wrote about how operating systems are becoming irrelevant. The piece points out how Noah was able to effortlessly switch from OS X to Linux. I appreciated the post because it wasn’t about the politics of free and open source software. Instead, he was writing about getting to choose the best tools for the job, an idea that sometimes gets misplaced in our conversations about Linux.

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1. Who are you, and what do you do?

   I’m Noah Lorang (or @noahhlo on Twitter), and I’m the data analyst for a company called 37signals (37signals.com). We make web-based productivity software — project management, contact management, group chat, and things like that. We also have a few other products and a popular blog called Signal vs. Noise (37signals.com/svn), for which I occasionally write pieces.

   I work on basically anything that has to do with numbers in some way - I analyze customer behavior, marketing campaigns, financial stuff, application performance, how our support team is doing, and everything else in between.

2. What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

   I recently switched to using Ubuntu 11.10 for my main desktop (I also have a Macbook Air running Mac OS X, but I only use it for traveling, which I rarely do). I’m using Gnome 3, but not because I dislike Unity (as many people on the internet do) — I just never used any of the features it provided, and my system runs at a much lower load without it.

3. What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

   I basically only interact with four pieces of software — Chromium for web browsing, Empathy for jabber/chat, Terminator as a terminal, and SublimeText2. I actually was a long-time Vim user who only recently switched to SublimeText — with Vintage mode, I get most of what I liked about Vim in a more polished exterior.

   Those four things let me use the R statistical programming language, Pine for email, Ruby (and Rails), our soon-to-be-release project managment tool Basecamp Next (37signals.com/basecampnext/), and our web-based chat tool, Campfire. I work remotely from home, as does almost two-thirds of the company, so Campfire is our office for most purposes.

4. What kind of hardware do you run it on?

   I’m using a pretty basic home-assembled machine — Intel Core i7 processor, 32 GB RAM, SSD for applications and 3x 1TB HDs in a RAID for data, and some mid-range AMD video card I don’t remember. I’m not a gamer, so all I cared about with the video card was that it drove the 3 monitors that I use (27” Apple Cinema display, 23” Acer, 22” Samsung). I do care a lot about comfortable interactions, so I use a Filco Majestouch mechanical keyboard and an Evoluent mouse.

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   I’m pretty close to it — I never have to worry about RAM, even doing pretty intensive data crunching with datasets in memory, and everything “just works.” I’ll probably put Ubuntu on my laptop pretty soon, at which point I’ll be completely satisfied.

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

   Sure, but it’s utterly boring — just plain black with some screenshots that are lying around. I never see my desktop — I just look at whatever I’m editing or doing in a terminal.

Interview conducted February 24, 2012

The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.

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I had my last drink of alcohol 3 years ago and it’s been a dance-battling, boat-cruising, skinny-dipping, word-traveling, HUGE party ever since.

It wasn’t a choice of restriction or having less fun, but rather of fully experiencing everything and truly having the most fun possible.  The way I pitched it to myself was “You should be able to do all the dumb, crazy adventurous, fun stuff you do drunk… sober.  If you’re drunk, you’re not fully there.  You don’t remember everything. You can’t experience the adventures fully.  You’re half-assing partying!” I took the challenge, but I was in a place where one reflects on life and big changes like this are easier to make.

I had recently been recruited to work in Microsoft Live Labs getting paid $100k+ a year to do a job that didn’t take my full mental abilities.  Late twenties. Newly single.  Big house. Nice car. In good shape… And then I found out I had cancer under my right eye.

Basal Cell Carcinoma.  I was soon told it wasn’t terminal, but having any kind of cancer in your twenties comes as a shock.  And it didn’t help that I immediately started searching the web for information… where with anything medical you end up on WebMD which is a choose your own adventure that always ends up with you dieing of cancer.

I wasn’t going to die from this cancer but was going to get a big ol scar smack on my face.  If you’re going to get a reminder that life is fragile and you should be living it to the fullest, in the middle of your face is actually a pretty good place to have it.  My life had a dramatic moment to help me make a change, but you don’t need to get cancer to change.  Every day is a dramatic moment.  Every day you have the opportunity to change you life for the better.  Tomorrow looks open in your calendar…

My past 3 years have been the most exciting, interesting & passionate of my life.  I’ve partied in exotic places on levels that are on par for music videos.  I went skinny dipping with the hottest girl from my childhood… and then married her and made a beautiful daughter.  I quit my cushy job and went full-time on my startup with $1M in venture capital from top investors.  I traveled to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Boston, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Hawaii, Miami & Haiti.  And I was fully present for all of it.  I made those experiences awesome.  I owned them.  And I want you to experience life the same way.

Wasted

If I write a book about this topic some day I’ll call it “Wasted” because that’s the perfect way to describe both sides of the coin.  You get wasted drunk… and totally waste an opportunity.  It’s fun beating a game on easy mode… it’s much more satisfying to beat it on hard mode.

Winning a marathon probably still feels awesome, even if you did it riding a bike… But so much better to win the race on your own two shredded legs. Making good love is amazing even if the lights are off… but do it with the lights on where you can see the person with you and remember everything… Now that’s REAL good love.

My point is. Being sober isn’t being a party pooper, it’s about being a party. All the time.  If you can achieve this, to party sober and have as much fun as you would drunk… you realize you have the ability to have an awesome time anytime.  It’s like finding out you have a party super-power!

And being drunk doesn’t make you more awesome, funny, adventurous and charismatic.  It just helps you forget that you don’t think you are.

Lessons Learned About Sober Partying

Permission to Be Stupid.

Liquid courage is nice.  It helps you get up the nerve to dance, spark up a conversation, relax… But you don’t need to drink in order to do this.  Chances are if you’re in a club/bar, everybody else is drunk.  Go ahead and act like an idiot.  They won’t know.  This is something I’ve experienced several times.  Somebody will offer me a drink late into a night of partying, or 3 days into a party-fest and I’ll have to say “no thanks, I don’t drink.”  Which almost always gets a “WHAT? Dude you were so fucking drunk the other night.”  No dude, you were.  And I was just having an awesome time along with you and you couldn’t tell the difference.

Social Crutch.

Twiddling your thumbs isn’t very sexy.  Having your nose up in your phone isn’t very engaging.  Truth is, having a drink in a bar/club helps socially.  It gives you something to hold onto and fidget with.  Taking sips allows for pauses in conversations.  And cheers-ing people is pretty fun.  But that drink doesn’t have to be alcoholic.  A bottle of water screams “I’m sober & no fun” to drunk people, so drink something bubbly in a glass.  A coke in a drink glass will just look like a jack & coke.  (Warning, you can end up drinking several cans of soda in one night which isn’t very good for your body, so I recommend switching it up to something like soda-water with a splash of cranberry and a lime on the rim.  Or just soda-water and a lime wedge.)

Bigger Bank Account. Smaller Waist.

In my drinking days, I could put down 8-10 drinks in a night… which can end up being your entire suggested caloric intake for a day.  And at $10 a drink, you could save $4k from year of social drinking.  And $4k is a trip to an exotic place and a true once in a lifetime adventure.

Best Idea Ever!

I don’t know how many times I’ve been drunk… hundreds?  But I can’t say that I ever woke up the morning after and thought… “Wow, I’m so glad I did that thing I did last night.  It’s significantly improved my life.“  More often than not the next morning is full of regrets.  I for sure haven’t had the best mornings of my life hungover, but top 5 worst days of my life were all recovering from a lot of drinking.

Enlist Your Mates.

It was much easier to sell myself on the change then it was to sell my best friend.  “Dude, you’re no fun when you’re not drinking.”  Now this is a guy I’ve done countless ridiculous, well-being endangering, hilarious stuff with.  And all it took was a shady sex club to convince him, I would get into whatever adventure presented itself, regardless of being sober. (It wasn’t really an eyes-wide-shut sort of thing… more awkwardly sitting in a shady theater laughing at what was going on.)  If your friends can’t accept the change they’ll constantly make you not drinking an issue, even though the issue is clearly theirs.  My gut tells me a few nights of awesome times sober and they’ll eventually forget the issue, and more than likely appreciate the designated driver.

I Challenge You.

I challenge you to fully realize how awesome life is. To: Party hard. Go on adventures. Make good love.  Be bold. Scare yourself. Laugh it up. Be awesome. You already are, and when you can party without alcohol, the rest of your life will become a party too.

A lot of the press have been trumpeting Andy Rubin’s tweet that as of a few days ago over 700,000 Android devices were being activated daily. One ridiculous report over at AllThingsD even floated the notion that we could see 2.5 million activations by the end of next year. But as far as I can tell, the 700,000 number isn’t good for Android. It’s bad. It means that Android activation growth has slowed dramatically, by almost a factor of three.

The last time Rubin talked about Android activations was back in June, when he said that 500,000 devices were being activated daily, and that they were seeing week-to-week activation growth of 4.4%. There’ve been about 25 weeks between the two tweets. Some quick math reveals that week-to-week growth since June hasn’t been anywhere close to the 4.4% Rubin was seeing. It’s now closer to 1.4%.

That’s a big drop. And I don’t know if the Kindle Fire is counted among Android devices activated. If so, the growth numbers for “real” Android devices – the ones Google can actually make money off of – are probably even worse.

And that report that we could see 2.5 million Android daily activations at a run rate of 900 million per year?

Gartner estimates that over 630 million smartphones will be sold in 2012. About half of those are predicted to be Android phones. I’m sure Android will make up the difference with tablets. After all, in six months the Messiah Tablet is going to be here.¹

The people at AllThingsD get paid for this stuff, right?

1. Google’s six month predictions are starting to remind me of Harold Camping’s predictions about the end of the world. ↩

Union Square - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Two stars.

Given the way my uncle died havin a drink directly after his funeral just didnt seem right so I went for a walk instead. One of them downtowns where all there is is stores. Came across a store was a big cube. Two stories tall and all silver. There was folks outside just standin there. Line stretchin round the block. Maybe a hundred people. I saw a man who’d brought his own chair. He had a shirt on with the same logo as the one on the store. I figured he worked there so I asked him what the line was all about. What were all these people waitin for. He told me it was for a apple phone or some such. I said dont these folks have telephones already? He told me they all had apple phones but it was the older one. I asked him what would happen to the old apple phones. He told me about a fella named Craig had a list and everbody sold their old telephones on it. A telephone sellin list.

Well I told him that all made about as much sense as a horse with two heads and he laughed like that was the funniest thing he ever did hear. Said he was goin to twinkle it. I left before he said anythin else that didnt make no sense and I went to the nearest bar and ordered a double whiskey and sat there drinkin it. I guess I sat there for a long time. Wonderin if when Rome was fallin all the Romans was standin in line waitin to get that new chariot or the like. The barbarians at the gates and them just standin there waitin.

The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones and Nexus One users have fared much, much better than most Android buyers.

I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States¹ up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device - be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch - as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn’t pretty - well, not for Android users:

Other than the original G1 and MyTouch, virtually all of the millions of phones represented by this chart are still under contract today. If you thought that entitled you to some support, think again:

• 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
• 12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less.
• 10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
• 11 of 18 stopped getting any support updates less than a year after release.
• 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
• 15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.
• In a few weeks, when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, every device on here will be another major version behind.
• At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.

Also worth noting that each bar in the chart starts from the first day of release - so it only gets worse for people who bought their phone late in its sales period.

This may be stating the obvious but there are at least three major reasons.

Ever since the iPhone turned every smartphone into a blank slate, the value of a phone is largely derived from the software it can run and how well the phone can run it. When you’re making a 2 year commitment to a device, it’d be nice to have some way to tell if the software was going to be remotely current in a year or, heck, even a month. Turns out that’s nearly impossible - here are two examples:

The Samsung Behold II on T-Mobile was the most expensive Android phone ever and Samsung promoted that it would get a major update to Eclair at least. But at launch the phone was already two major versions behind — and then Samsung decided not to do the update after all, and it fell three major OS versions behind. Every one ever sold is still under contract today.

The Motorola Devour on Verizon launched with a Megan Fox Super Bowl ad, while reviews said it was “built to last and it delivers on features.” As it turned out, the Devour shipped with an OS that was already outdated. Before the next Super Bowl came around, it was three major versions behind. Every one ever sold is still under contract until sometime next year.

Besides the obvious platform fragmentation problems, consider this comparison: iOS developers, like Instapaper’s Marco Arment, waited patiently until just this month to raise their apps’ minimum requirement to the 11 month old iOS 4.2.1. They can do so knowing that it’s been well over 3 years since anyone bought an iPhone that couldn’t run that OS. If developers apply that same standard to Android, it will be at least 2015 before they can start requiring 2010’s Gingerbread OS. That’s because every US carrier is still selling - even just now introducing² - smartphones that will almost certainly never run Gingerbread and beyond. Further, those are phones still selling for actual upfront money - I’m not even counting the generally even more outdated & presumably much more popular free phones.

It seems this is one area the Android/Windows comparison holds up: most app developers will end up targeting an ancient version of the OS in order to maximize market reach.

In the chart, the dashed line in the middle of each bar indicates how long that phone was getting any kind of support updates - not just major OS upgrades. The significant majority of models have received very limited support after sales were discontinued. If a security or privacy problem popped up in old versions of Android or its associated apps (i.e. the browser), it’s hard to imagine that all of these no-longer-supported phones would be updated. This is only less likely as the number of phones that manufacturers would have to go back and deal with increases: Motorola, Samsung, and HTC all have at least 20 models each in the field already, each with a range of carriers that seemingly have to be dealt with individually.

That’s a very good question. Obviously a big part of the problem is that Android has to go from Google to the phone manufacturers to the carriers to the devices, whereas iOS just goes from Apple directly to devices. The hacker community (e.g. CyanogenMod, et cetera) has frequently managed to get these phones to run the newer operating systems, so it isn’t a hardware issue.

It appears to be a widely held viewpoint³ that there’s no incentive for smartphone manufacturers to update the OS: because manufacturers don’t make any money after the hardware sale, they want you to buy another phone as soon as possible. If that’s really the case, the phone manufacturers are spectacularly dumb: ignoring the 2 year contract cycle & abandoning your users isn’t going to engender much loyalty when they do buy a new phone. Further, it’s been fairly well established that Apple also really only makes money from hardware sales, and yet their long term update support is excellent (see chart).

In other words, Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one. Then again, all of this may be ascribing motives and intent where none exist - it’s entirely possible that the root cause of the problem is just flat-out bad management (and/or the aforementioned spectacular dumbness).

All of the even slightly cheaper phones are much worse than the iPhone when it comes to OS support, but it’s interesting to note that most of the phones on this list were actually not cheaper than the iPhone when they were released. Unlike the iPhone however, the “full-priced” phones are frequently discounted in subsequent months. So the “low cost” phones that fueled Android’s generally accepted price advantage in this period were basically either (a) cheaper from the outset, and ergo likely outdated & terribly supported or (b) purchased later in the phone’s lifecycle, and ergo likely outdated & terribly supported.

Also, at any price point you’d better love your rebates. If you’re financially constrained enough to be driven by upfront price, you can’t be that excited about plunking down another $100 cash and waiting weeks or more to get it back. And sometimes all you’re getting back is a “$100 Promotion Card” for your chosen provider. Needless to say, the iPhone has never had a rebate.

Along similar lines, a very small but perhaps telling point: the price of every single Android phone I looked at ended with 99 cents - something Apple has never done (the iPhone is $199, not $199.99). It’s almost like a warning sign: you’re buying a platform that will nickel-and-dime you with ads and undeletable bloatware, and it starts with those 99 cents. And that damn rebate form they’re hoping you don’t send in.

I’m not going to. I do think that having 15 months or so of history gives a good perspective on how a phone has been treated, but it’s also just a labor issue - it takes a while to dredge through the various sites to determine the history of each device. I plan to continue on and might also try to publish the underlying table with references. I also acknowledge that it’s possible I’ve missed something along the way.

For the major Android version release dates, I used the date at which it was actually available on a normal phone you could get via normal means. I did not use the earlier SDK release date, nor the date at which ROMs, hacks, source, et cetera were available.

Finally, it’s worth noting that people outside the US have often had it even worse. For example, the Nexus One didn’t go on sale in Europe until 5 months after the US, the Droid/Milestone FroYo update happened over 7 months later there, and the Cliq never got updated at all outside of the US.

1. Thanks primarily to CNET & Wikipedia for the list of phones.↩

2. Yes, AT&T committed to Gingerbread updates for its 2011 Android phones, but only those that had already been released at the time of the July 25 press release. The Impulse doesn’t meet that criterion. Nor does the Sharp FX Plus.↩

3. A couple of samples just from the past week: 1, 2 - in comments.↩