Hong Kong’s skyline in 2008, photographed by Scrolllock.
Has it been 20 years since Dad and I sat in front of the telly to watch both Britannia sail out of the harbour and China set off a magnificent fireworksā display to celebrate getting Hong Kong becoming one of her possessions again?
Following some of the 20th anniversary commemorations through the media, notably the BBC World Service which followed them keenly, I had very mixed feelings.
Having been born British in the then-colony (whilst cheering the All Blacks today, natch) I have some nostalgia for the Hong Kong of old. If it werenāt for some aspects of colonialism, my mother wouldnāt have secured a decent job at Wellington Hospital (viz. an English and Welsh qualification) and I probably would never have learned English before the age of three. It all helped.
It was the spectre of 1997, specifically the fear of what the Communists would do after July 1, 1997, that prompted my parents to make plans to emigrate as early as the 1970s.
Of course, history as shown that largely those fears have not come to pass, although the Umbrella Revolution highlights that universal suffrage is not a reality in the city.
In a post-Brexit (or at least a post-Brexit vote) era, these past two decades also highlight that British nationalism is meaningless and little more than a tool for politicians to yield for propaganda.
You can fairly argue that that is what nationalism always has been. It could also equally be argued that nationalism is founded on some rose-coloured-glasses past, painting a picture that actually never existed.
American nostalgia looks back at a 1950s’ economic boom while ignoring segregation while British nostalgia shows a child pushing his bike up a hill to DvoÅĆ”kās New World Symphony.
Brexiters, rightly or wrongly, want to reassert a British self-determination founded on a British national character.
Most Britons I talked to, regardless of their politics, agree that if you are Hong Kong British, then you are British. That should be some solace to the families of those HKers who lost their lives fighting under the Crown in both World War II and the Falklands.
Yet there is no reality to this claim when it comes to government. Fearful of an influx of Hong Kong British emigrating to the UK, the British National (Overseas) category was invented in 1985, to replace our previous status as Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. It didnāt do the wealthy any harm, mind: a lot went to Canada and Australia and took their money there. Others stayed and invested in China, and helped fuel the growth of Shenzhen as a technological powerhouse. The Hong Kong Chinese person is generally industrious, many having descended from refugees from China in 1949 who decided to make the most of the freedoms in the colony. That work ethic was certainly nothing any Briton in the UK needed to fear, yet somehow we were classed as Johnny Foreigner.
When I went to the UK in 2001 with that BN(O) passport, I had terrible trouble at immigration, denied entry when queued up with other British subjects. I wound up at the back of the queue with some white South Africans, who were less than impressed and said, āBut thatās apartheid.ā Correspondence to the High Commission, Foreign Secretary, and Shadow Foreign Secretary went unanswered, though I did get a response from the PM.
In other words, the fears within Enoch Powellās āRivers of Bloodā speech held more sway in Blairās Britain than any sacrifice in the Falklands (even if, I should point out, Powell was not addressing immigration per se). Today, I wonder if they still do.
The Tiber was greater than the Atlantic.
Labour were quick to point out how wrong the Tories were with BN(O) back in the 1980s, but in 2001, Labour wasnāt working.
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, said at the time of the handover in 1997 that Britain would āwalk with youā, that Britain had won assurances that elections in Hong Kong would be free and fair, and that if China ever failed to live up to this pledge, Britain would take the matter to the United Nations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
In 20 years, Britain has not lifted a finger.
We might get lucky like the Gurkhas one of these days if Joanna Lumley wants to come to our aid. But we certainly canāt rely on any politician.
Being British (I retained my nationality and applied before the deadline to be a BN(O)), you can see how the pro-Brexit position was hard to stomach to me. The likes of Nigel Farage and the “other” New York-born politician with funny hair, Boris Johnson, seemed to revel in some idea of British unity, but anyone from Hong Kong will tell you that in politics, that is an empty concept.
Only one of my friends who was pro-Brexit voted based on the idea of an independent Britain being more efficient when freed from the whims of Brussels, and I respect him for it; most of what I saw was aimed against immigration. The current PMās belief in safeguarding the interests of British subjects should be cold comfort to those affected: if they couldnāt defend our interests, will others fare any better, especially with a minority government in a Conservative Party that actually remains as divided as ever?
Not that I am championing the Peopleās Republic of China for its handling of relations between mainlanders and Hong Kongers; it has equally been exclusive of us and our unique culture. I have already gone into the Umbrella Revolution elsewhere (even if the TV One website omitted my televised comments about Wikileaksā reporting of US State Department interference as this goes against the western narrative), and this doesnāt need exploring again. The disappearance of publishers critical of Beijing should sound alarm bellsāI note that one of them was a British subject, but the best the UK could muster was an expression of concern. I cannot help but wonder if this is the fate that awaits Britons on the Continent should something happen to them.
Some negatives aside, I am happy that when I visited a āChineseā Hong Kong in 2006, I found a city whose character was intact, and I remarked at how unchanged that was. In subsequent visits in 2008, 2010 and 2012, that core remained. Given all the paranoia before 1997, āOne country, two systemsā has certainly not been as bad as many of usāincluding those of us who moved our entire lives abroad because of those fearsāpredicted. I wish all HKers well on this 20th anniversary.
I’m not so sure that GM going into talks to sell Opel and Vauxhall to PSA (PeugeotāCitroĆ«n) is that big a surprise.
We obviously hold a lot of nostalgia for these brands, and itās only right that we perceive GM as selling its family jewels. Opel has made some great cars over the years, and Buick in China and the US, Vauxhall in the UK, and Holden in Australia rely on this division to provide it with product.
But it wasnāt long ago that I said I foresaw the next Holden Commodore being a four-door booted model based on a Chinese Buick Regal thatās on the same platform. While Iāve been proved wrong with scoop photos and inside information from journalists in the immediate term, longer-term this doesnāt look so far-fetched, in a future where Peugeot owns OpelāVauxhall and GM has no choice but to consider Chinese sourcing seriously.
Therefore, GM isnāt thinking that itās selling off the family jewels, at least the GM where Chinese partner SAIC is overwhelmingly calling the shots.
What they are thinking is this: āWe should be able to develop the whole lot in China.ā They werenāt nostalgic over Holden, and they wonāt be thrilled with the losses at Opel. Itās willing to sacrifice it to make its own position stronger. Weāve already seen that SAIC has called it quits when it comes to British assembly at Longbridgeāthatās now all done back in China.
Thereās been such a massive technology transfer from the US to China over the last few years that Europe is seen as surplus by the folks in Shanghai. They have all the platforms on which they can make products globally. They may even, rightly or wrongly, think that the remaining brands can get them into Europe, even if GM had pulled its Korean-made Chevrolets out of there.
Holden can be used to westernize the product and the Australians have shown they can do it well.
Iām not saying I agree with this, as a long-time Opel fan. I was looking forward to the new Commodores coming out of RĆ¼sselsheim. The car looks the business, itās roughly the size of the recently deleted Ford Falcon (therefore, Iām not sure why people are so upset about its size), and the majority of buyers donāt even know which set of wheels the powerās going to. Iāve got an Astra K coming in a few months at Lucire.
What youāre going to see is GM basically being a Shanghai-run firm with China supplying global markets and the US operations kept going for their brand cachet.
In the meantime, a hypothetical PSA-run Opel will continue with the existing plans till the end of these modelsā life cycles, then China will become the manufacturing hub for numerous markets.
SAIC already makes a load of Cadillacs, Buicks and Chevrolets for the domestic market, and theyāll want to pump them out more widely.
Theyāve also shown that they can take new GM platforms and turn them into Roewesāor old GM platforms and turn them into Baojuns.
PSA, meanwhile, with 14 per cent controlled by Chinese firm Dongfeng, will pursue a strategy of streamlining platforms and be focused more on Europe. It could pay off as cross-town rival Renault has done well with Nissan, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Dacia and AvtoVAZ, but it wonāt nearly be as secure. The two French groups have been obsessed with one another for as long as I can remember, for years spending more time rivalling each other than actually coming up with what customers wanted.
Dongfeng may have to cough up more lolly and it could become a larger shareholder than the Peugeot family or the French government. But will it have the sort of geographical coverage that Renault has?
Thatāll be what PSA will be asking itself, knowing that itās reasonably strong in Chinaābut also realizing that it hasnāt been clever at creating models that can be sold globally (the current CitroĆ«n C6, DS 5LS and the DS 6 among them, sold exclusively in China). Nevertheless, there are savings to be had, though the most obvious fear is that Opel and Vauxhall will go the way of Panhard and Talbot, brands that fell into either Peugeot or CitroĆ«nās hands over the years and become defunct at the expense of the parent companiesā. Is there a desire to extend the groupās brand portfolio beyond Peugeot, CitroĆ«n, DS, the various Dongfeng lines, and the ex-Hindustan Ambassador?
The official statement is non-committal enough and gives nothing away: āPSA Group and General Motors confirm they are exploring numerous strategic initiatives aiming at improving profitability and operational efficiency, including a potential acquisition of Opel Vauxhall by PSA.
āThere can be no assurance that an agreement will be reached.ā
In any case, we always said that SAIC was playing a long game. MG was a toe in the water. GM is the real deal.
Controlling GM means they can do as they please, and whatās good for China is good for General Motors.
Above: Brave Bison’s predecessor, Rightster, left much to be desired in how it dealt with publishers, while investment commentators had concerns, too.
Twenty-sixteen had some strange developments on the publishing front.
First, we noticed Alexa rankings for a lot of sites changed. Facebook itself went from second to third, where it has stayed. Our own sites dropped as well, across the board, even though our own stats showed that traffic was pretty much where it was. In Autocadeās case, it was rising quickly.
We checked, and Alexa had announced that it had increased its panel again in 2016. There was an announcement about this in 2014, but things improved even more greatly during the last Gregorian calendar year, specifically in April. (April 2016, it seems, was a huge month of change: read on.) This means Alexa began sampling more people to get a more accurate picture. Given that Facebook fell as well as us, then we drew the conclusion that the new panel must include audiences in China and other non-Anglophone places. It makes sense: Alexa is a global service and should take global data points. Never mind that weāve suffered as a result, we actually agree with this approach. And weāre taking steps in 2017 to look at capturing extra traffic with our content.
Alexa, when we approached them, said it could not comment about the origins of the panellists. Again, fair enough. Weāve made an educated guess and will work accordingly.
Secondly, there were two ad networks whose advertising disappeared off our sites. The first, Gorilla Nation, started dropping off long before 2016. In 2015, we asked why and were asked to fill out some form relating to Google ads. Anyone whoās followed this blog will know why that was unpalatable to usāand we want to make sure our readers donāt fall victim to Googleās snooping, either. Iām not saying that Google ads donāt appear at allāitās the largest advertising network in the world, and its tentacles are everywhereābut if I can avoid opening our properties up to Google willingly, then Iāll do so.
Itās a shame because weāve worked exceedingly well with Gorilla Nation and found them very professional.
We have, sadly, entered an era whereāas found by my friend and colleague Bill Shepherdāonline advertising is controlled by a duopoly. In The New York Times, April 18, 2016 (italics added): āAdvertisers adjusted spending accordingly. In the first quarter of 2016, 85 cents of every new dollar spent in online advertising will go to Google or Facebook, said Brian Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst.ā I donāt think this is fair, as theyāre not the ones generating the content. Google has also managed to game services like Adblock Plus: theyāve paid for their ads not to be blocked. (Better has more information on why certain ad blockers are ineffective.) Itās not difficult to see why native advertising has increased, and this is generally more favourable to the publisher. In 2017, itās time to build up the advertising side again: two years ago we already saw quarters where online overtook print in terms of ad revenue.
Burst Media’s ads also disappeared, and we had been working with them since 1998. Now called Rhythm One, they responded, āWe recently migrated to a new platform and your account was flagged by an automated process as part of that. All that being saidāwe can absolutely get you live again.ā That was April. I added one of their team to Skype, as requested, but we never connectedāthe helpful staff member wasnāt around when I called in. Again, a bit of a shame. As I wrote this blog post, I sent another message just to see if we could deal with the matter via email rather than real-time on Skype.
At least this wasnāt a unilateral cessation of a business arrangement, which Rightster sprung on us without notice in April. Rightster’s Christos Constantinou wrote, āIt is with regret that we inform you that from yesterday we ceased providing video content services to your account.ā This wasnāt the first change Rightster sprung on usāits code had changed in the past, leaving big gaps in our online layoutsāand soon after, everyone there clammed up, despite an initial email from another Rightster staffer that feigned surprise at what had happened. Mr Constantinou never picked up phone calls made since that point, and we couldnāt get an answer out of them. No breaches of their terms and conditions were ever made by us.
We were only interested in a small handful of their video sources anyway, all of whom exist on other platforms, so one would have thought that it was to Rightsterās advantage to continue working with a well respected brand (Lucire). A bit of digging discovered that the firm was not in good shape: a pre-tax loss in the first half of 2015 of Ā£11Ā·5 million, with shares trading in October of that year at 10Ā·50p per share, down from its float price of 60p. That year, it was forecast by Share Prophets that things would only get worse for the firm, and they were proved right within months. Not long after ceasing to work with us (and presumably others), Rightster became Brave Bison Group, restructured, and became a āsocial video broadcasterā, but it was still burning cash (to the tune of Ā£1Ā·3 million, according to the same website in July 2016).
Gorilla Nation and Burstās slots have largely been replaced by other networks as well as ads secured in-house, while Rightster effectively did us a favour, though its opaqueness didnāt help. In fact, when they didnāt answer questions, it was only natural to surf online to investigate what was going on. Initially, there was some negative stuff about Burst, though my concerns were put to rest when they emailed me back. With Rightster, there was no such solace: finding all the news about the firm being a lemon confirmed to me that we were actually very lucky to have them farewell us.
We revived an old player that we used, through Springboard, itself linked to Gorilla Nation, so weāre still serving advertising from them, just in a different form. Video content has not vanished from the Lucire sites, for those who are interested in it.
How a company behaves can be linked to how well it ultimately performs, and what itās worth. Given our treatment by Rightster, it wasnāt that surprising to learn that something was rotten in Denmark (or London). Maybe that first staff member was genuinely surprised, with employees not being told about their company running out of money. And unless things have truly changed within, it could well continue to function dysfunctionally, which will give those AIM columnists more ammunition.
Above: The Holden Commodore SS-V, facing its last year of manufacture.
The current wisdom appears to be that when the Holden Commodore VF leaves production in 2017, itāll be replaced by the liftback version of the Opel Insignia B. After all, the only big sedan Ford Australiaās offering in place of the now-defunct Falcon is the liftback version of the Mondeo, a car thatās wider, taller, and with a longer wheelbase than the supposedly larger Falcon. I think the crystal ball-gazers are wrong.
I could say that the Australian and New Zealand big car buyer is very traditional and would balk at the idea of the big Holden being a hatch. But thatās not the only reason. Thereās a bigger one: China.
Above: GM currently makes the Opel Insignia A-based Buick Regal in China, after initially beginning with German production.
Iāve had a phone call and a lot of comments on this in the last couple of days: my Dad, who is 81 with early-stage Alzheimerās, called the US presidential election for Donald Trump months ago. I posted it on my social networks the day he made his definitive call, and friends remembered it. Thank you for all your compliments.
Go back to 2015, he had called the Republican primary for Trump.
I wasnāt as confident but I had Tweeted the week before the election that polls were understating Trumpās actual support by at least 6 per cent.
In 2008, when everyone had dismissed Gov. Sarah Palin, he said that she wasnāt going to go away, and that sheād command an even greater influence in the first Obama term. While he predicted an Obama win, again quite early on, he wasnāt optimistic and didnāt think there would be great change in the US. You may or may not agree with that.
Going right back to the 1980s, when I was at college, and before China showed any signs of opening up, he made the call about its economic rise, and that I would be assured, by the time I was in my 30s and 40s, that many would want to deal with the country. It would be, I remember him telling me, a career advantage to being Chineseāin contrast to the racism we encountered far more frequently back then.
During the height of the Muldoon era, Dad, who counted himself as part of Robās Mob, made the call that Sir Robert Muldoon would not be able to hold on to his power or reputation in his old age. When a documentary aired condemning Sir Robert after his death, so that he wouldnāt be around to file a defamation suit, he said, āI told you so.ā
Even in the elections I contested (and he encouraged me to run), while he refused to be drawn on what he thought my chances were, he was unequivocally clear that my rival, John Morrison, wouldnāt win, in 2013. Dad certainly did better than some so-called political experts I can name.
And if you want to get really spooky, during the Martin Bashir interview of Princess Diana, he said that by the time she was 37, sheād have a āreally bad yearā. He didnāt say sheād die.
No, heās not a Mystic Meg of any sort. Heās a guy whoās been around for a while and kept his eyes open.
If you want to know his secret, I can tell you that his political projections are based in part around reading. Not mainstream media, but websites that heās discovered over the years himself. Heās a keen web surfer and loves his news. He doesnāt put that much stock in political āexpertsā, and after having run myself, I can fully understand why.
Heād even take in the viewpoints on Russia Today, which gives you an idea of how varied his reading was. Just today I caught him watching an address from Edward Snowden.
With Palin, it was probably the sudden rise of her fan sites set up by US conservatives. He hadnāt seen such a rapid rise of sites that soon galvanized their support around the former Alaskan governor before. While mainstream media dismissed her and gave the impression that post-2008, she wouldnāt matter, Dad had entirely the opposite reading. Politically centrist, and, like me, a swing voter, he kept following the sites out of interest, and saw how they morphed into the Tea Party movement. He also knew they wouldnāt go away any time soon, and observed that there was a Palin effect, as the likes of Ted Cruz soon found out when contesting their Senate seats.
And, despite my own criticisms of this practice, Dad would read the comments. Sometimes he would wade through hundreds of them, to get a sense of what people were thinking.
It was his reading of media from left and right during the latest US presidential election that saw him made his calls very assertively.
Rather than dismiss certain conservatives as ill-educated, as some media might, Dad treated them as human beings. He knew they would galvanize and get behind Trump.
When youāve lived through a world war (including an occupation) and then a civil war, and saw your family start from the bottom again after 1949, you get to be good at knowing what people go through.
Heās always been politically switched on, and had a keen interest in history and economics, the latter of which he studied at a tertiary level. But heād always explain to me that it came down to people and their behaviour, and never rational decision-making. I might have only lived just over half his lifetime so far, but I find little fault in that statement. All new movements have plenty of power, till they become the establishment.
His thoughts on China in the 1980s could well have stemmed from that: I never asked him, and aphasia means heād now find difficulty telling me anyway.
Sadly for the US, he finds appeal in the theory that the nation will break up, though he hasnāt quite yet made the call in the same way he made the one for the Trump presidency. But as with his Trump prediction, Iām publishing this one online.
Heās never stated it as succinctly but he has, in passing in the 1980s and 1990s, said that the British Empire wouldnāt last much longer beyond our current monarchās reign.
You never know, we might be coming back to this post in a few yearsā time. These are gloomy scenarios but Iād rather put Dadās ideas out there now, as I did with the Trump presidency, rather than tell you ex post facto how clever he was. The lesson: treat people as people, and itās amazing how much that will reveal.
Iām really impressed with Meizuās latest Flyme OS upgrades. I didnāt know that they were there, but then I have a lot of my notifications turned off. After discovering there was one, I went from my existing 4.5 (I had already upgraded once since I bought the phone) to 5.1, and everything worked fine. There was another sub-version upgrade the same night. US software vendors could learn a lot from this Chinese company.
It wasnāt perfect (I made some notes on my Tumblr) but it was a darn sight better than some of the upgrades Iāve had on Mac and Windows. I accept there is less to go wrong with cellphones, but Iāve heard many a complaint from IOS users about their upgrades. The phone feels faster, and after a bit of exploring through the menus, Iāve turned off resource-hogging notifications and data-sucking settings. I stand by my earlier review of my Meizu M2 Noteāif they keep up this level of reliability, and can remain Google-free, Iād happily buy from them again.
Iāve just switched from Inside, the much vaunted news app from entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, to Wildcard as my principal news app on my phone. I never got to use Circa (which I understand Jason was also behind), which sounded excellent: by the time I downloaded it, they had given up.
But we all need news, and I donāt like the idea of apps that are from a single media organization.
Inside seemed like a good idea, and I even got round to submitting news items myself. The idea is that the items there are curated by users, shared via the app. There was a bit of spam, but the legit stuff outnumbered it.
However, I canāt understand the choices these days. A few items I put in from Radio New Zealand, Māori Television and The New Zealand Herald were fineāstories about the flag and the passing of Dr Ranginui Walker, for instanceābut none of the ones about the passing of Martin Crowe, possibly of more international interest, remained.
There were other curious things: anything from Autocar is summarily rejected (they donāt even appear) while I notice Jalopnik is fine. When it comes to cars, this is the only place where the publication with the longest history in the sector is outranked by a web-only start-up, whose pieces are enjoyable but not always accurate. The only car piece it accepted from me was about Tesla selling in Indiana, but Renault, Volkswagen, Lamborghini, Porsche, Aston Martin and other manufacturersā news didnāt make it. This I donāt get. And I like to think I know a little bit about cars, in the week when Autocade hit 8,000,000 page views.
Now, if this is meant to be an international app, downloadable by everyone, then it should permit those of us in our own countries to have greater say in what is relevant to our compatriots.
Visit the New Zealand category, and you see a few items from yours truly, but then after that, they are few and far between: the Steven Joyce dildo incident, for example, and you donāt have to scroll much to see the Otago car chase being stopped by sheep last January. A bit more has happened than these events, thank you. No wonder Americans think nothing happens here.
According to Inside, these news itemsāseparated only by one about Apple issuing a recall in our part of the worldāare far more important to users following the New Zealand category than Martin Crowe’s death.
The UK is only slightly better off, but not by much. I notice my submission about Facebook not getting away with avoiding taxes in the UK vanished overnight, too.
News of the royal baby in Sweden wasnāt welcome just now. Nor was the news about the return of one of the Hong Kong booksellers, but news from Bloomberg of a luxury home on the Peak, which I submitted last month, was OK. Lulaās questioning by police has also disappeared (admittedly my one was breaking news, and very short), though Inside does have a later one about his brief arrest.
Yet to locals, the rejected ones are important, more important than Gladys Knight singing to a cop or a knife on O. J. Simpsonās estate (which have made it).
This is a very American app, and thatās fine: itās made by a US company, and Iām willing to bet most of its users are American. However, the āallā feed, in my view, should be global; those who want news tailored to them already have the choice of selecting their own topics. (Itās the first thing the app gets you to do after signing in.) And if some fellow in New Zealand wants to submit, then he should have the same capacity as someone in the US. After all, there are more of them than there are of us, and I hardly think my contributions (which now keep vanishing!) will upset the status quo.
Or does it?
I mean, I have posted the odd thing from The Intercept about their countryās elections.
Whatever the case, I think itās very odd for an app in the second decade of the century to be so wedded to being geocentric. I can understand getting stuff weeded out for quality concernsāI admit Iāve posted the odd item that is an op-ed rather than hard newsābut this obsession to be local, not global, reinforces some false and outdated stereotypes about the US.
Itās like Facebook not knowing that time zones outside US Pacific Time exist and believing its 750 million (as it then was) users all lived there.
My advice to app developers is: if you donāt intend your work to be global, then donāt offer it to the global market. Donāt let me find your app on a Chinese app centre. Say that itās for your country only and let it be.
Or, at least be transparent about how your apps work, because I canāt find anything from Inside about its curation processes other than the utopian, idealistic PR that says weāre all welcome, and we all have a chance to share. (We do. Just our articles donāt stay on the feed for very long.)
Wildcard has an attractive user interface, and its mixture of news is more appealing, especially if you want more depth.
Admittedly, Iāve only been on Wildcard for less than a day but Iāve already found it more international in scope. It also has more interesting editorial items. It is still US-developedāeast coast this time, instead of west coastābut it supplements its own news with whatās in your Twitter feed. Itās not as Twitter-heavy as Nuzzel, which I found too limited, but seems to give me a mixture of its own curation with those of my contacts. The user interface is nice, too.
Iām not writing off Inside altogetherāif youāre after a US-based, US-centric news app, then itās probably excellent, although I will leave that decision to its target market. I can hardly judge when dildos matter more to its users than the greatest cricket batsman in our country.
For me, Wildcard seems to be better balanced, it doesnāt make promises about public curation that it canāt keep, and Iāve already found myself spending far more time browsing its pieces than the relatively small amount that seem to remain on Inside. It is still a bit US-biased in these first 24 hours, probably because it hasnāt taken that much from my Twitter contacts yet. There seems to be more news on it and Iām getting a far better read, even of the US-relevant items. Iām looking forward to using it more: it just seems that much more 21st-century.
Other than for the landline, Iāve never bought a phone before. Each cellphone has come as a result of a company plan or a loyalty gift from the telco, but when my Huawei Ascend Y200 began needing resets several times a dayāIāve had computer experts tell me this is the phone, or the SD card (like any endeavour, itās hard to find agreement; this is like saying that the problem with an axe lies with the handle or the blade)āI decided to replace it. Plus, having built websites for clients it seemed only fair to have a device on which I could test them on an OS newer than Android 2.3, and after a few days I have to say the Meizu M2 Note has been worth every penny. (The Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 was on the shortlist but the Meizu performed better in online tests, e.g. this one.)
You can find the specs on this device elsewhere, in reviews written by people far more au fait with cellular technology than me, but a few things about arriving in the mid-2010s with such a gadget struck me as worth mentioning.
First, I opted for a blue one. Theyāre usually cheaper. Since I have a case for it, I donāt have to put up with the colour on the back anyway, so why not save a few bucks if the guts are the same?
Secondly, itās astonishing to think in five inches I have the same number of pixels as I do in 23 inches on my monitor.
Thirdly, cellular battery technology has come a heck of a long way. (Down side: you canāt replace it in this device.)
But hereās an absolutely wonderful bonus I never expected: itās Google-free. Yes, the Flyme OS is built on Googleās Android 5.1.1, but the beauty of buying a phone from a country where Google is persona non grata is that Iām not stuck with all the crap I had on the Telstra Clear-supplied Huawei. No Google Plus, Google Play Store, Gmail, Google Maps and all the other stuff I had to switch off constantly. I could have had the phone rooted but it never was a big enough priority, even with my dislike of the big G.
I donāt know how much ultimately gets back to Google through simply using its OS, but Iāve managed to keep away from signing in to any of their services. In this post-Snowden era, I regard that as a good thing.
The phone booted up for the first time and gave me English as an option (as the seller indicated), so the deviceās OS is all in the language Iām most fluent in. However, itās not that weird for me to have Chinese lettering around, so the apps that stayed in the Chinese language are comprehensible enough to me. There is an app store that isnāt run by Google, at which all the apps are availableāInstagram, Dolphin Browser, Opera Mini, plus some of the other admin tools I use. Nothing has shown up in my Google Dashboard. The store is in Chinese, but if you recognize the icon you should be all right, and the apps work in the language youāve set your OS to.
The China-only apps arenāt hard to dispose of, and the first ones to go were Netease, Dianping (I donāt even use an Anglo dining review app, so why would I need a China-only one?), Amap (again, it only works in China, and it can be easily reinstalled through Autonavi and its folded paper icon), and 116114, an app from a Chinese telco. Weibo I donāt mind keeping, since I already have an account, and I can see some utility to retaining Alipay, the painting app, and a few others.
And having a Google-free existence means I now have Here Maps, the email is set up with my Zoho āboxes, and 1Weather replaces the default which only gives Chinese cities.
What is remarkable is that the Chinese-designed default apps are better looking than the western counterparts, which is not something you hear very often. The opposite was regularly the case. A UI tipping-point could have happened.
I also checked the 2G, 3G and 4G frequencies against Vodafone New Zealand’s to ensure compatibilityāthere are at least two different M2 Notes on the market, so caveat emptor. Vodafone also recommends installing only one SIM, which suits me fine, as the other slot is occupied by a 64 Gbyte micro-SD card.
The new Flyme-based-on-Android keyboard isnāt particularly good though, and I lose having a full set of smart quotes, a proper apostrophe, and en and em dashes, but far more obscure Latin-2 glyphs are accessible. Iām not sure what the logic is behind this.
I had an issue getting the Swift keyboard to install, but Iāve opted for Swype, which, curiously, like the stock keyboard, is missing common characters. Want to type a g with a breve for ErdoÄan? Or a d with a caron? Easy. An en dash? Impossible.
This retrograde step doesnāt serve me and there are a few options in Swype. First, I had to add the Russian keyboard, which does give an em dash, alongside the English one, though I havenāt located a source of en dashes yet. Secondly, after copying and pasting in a proper apostrophe from a document, I proceeded to type in words to commit them to my personal Swype dictionary: itās, heād, sheāll, wonāt, etc. This technique has worked, and while itās not 100 per cent perfect as thereāll be words I missed, itās better than nowt.
I see users have been complaining about the omissions online for three years, and if nothing has been done by now, I doubt Swypeās developers are in a rush to sort it.
Swypeās multilingual keyboards are easy to switch between, work well, but I havenāt tried my Kiwi accent on the Dragon-powered speech recognition software within.
Going from a 3Ā·2 Mpixel camera to a 13 Mpixel one has been what I expected, and finally I get a phone with a forward-facing camera for the first time since the mid-2000s (before selfies became de rigueur). Itās worth reminding oneself that a 13 Mpixel camera means files over 5 Mbyte are commonplace, and thatās too big for Twitter. Iām also going to have to expect to need more storage space offline, as I always back up my files.
I havenāt found a way to get SMSs off yet (suggestions are welcome), unlike the Huawei, but transferring other files (e.g. photos and music) is easier. Whereas the Huawei needed to have USB sharing switched on, the Meizu doesnāt care, and you can treat it as a hard drive when connected to your PC without doing anything. That, too, has made life far easier.
Iāve been able to upgrade the OS without issue, and Microsoft (and sometimes Apple) would do well to learn from this.
It leaves the name, Meizu (é ę), which in Cantonese at least isnāt the most pleasant when translatedāletās say itās all a bit Goblin King. Which may be appropriate this week.
Iām not one who ever gets a device for imageās sake, and I demand that they are practical. So far, the Meizu hasnāt let me down with its eight cores, 16 Gbyte ROM and 4G capability, all for considerably less than a similarly equipped cellphone that wears an Apple logo. And itās nice to know that this side of Apple, one can have a Google-free device.
An interesting weekend on Facebook. Despite regaining access, Iām not allowed to post links (with the accusation that my computer is infectedāsee above), and after considerable research, I know this to be completely untrue. The Facebook malware accusations are targeted at certain users and, from the tiny sample of four that have responded to me, we are all heavy users. Just as I theorized back in June 2014 when Facebook shut down for me for 69 hours, some of us have reached a limit on their servers.
Boffins, and Facebook, say that thatās impossible, but there have been countless signs of that over the years. Most were recorded on Get Satisfaction before Facebook shut down that community (how convenient). Among them were things such as Facebook being unable to show me every video I had uploadedāthe list began at 2011 and earlier ones were omittedāand the many occasions where I could no longer post, comment, like or share. Thereās a direct parallel to my experiences on the former Vox.com, which Six Apart confirmed in 2009 and which they had no official answer for.
Whatās the best course of action if Facebook accuses you of malware and forces you to download one of their programs from Trend Micro, F-Secure or Kaspersky? Delete your cookies. Once you do that, you can regain access, though, like me, youāll have a limited account where link-sharing is impossible. Initially, I was able to share a few links after my accessing Facebook, but it eventually became a blanket block, with the odd one getting through (two a day in my case).
If you want to be extra-safe, run the free version of Malware Bytes. The free one wonāt conflict with your existing antivirus set-up (Iām not trying to do Malware Bytes out of money), but, like the rest of us, youāll likely discover that your system is clean.
One woman got around this by downloading a new browser, although she was also limited on the link-posting.
Whatever you do, do not listen to these big firms. Facebook, Google et al are, as Iāve been documenting over the years, particularly deceptive. Iāve still had to deal with the remnants of Facebookās scan switching off McAfee, nearly two days later.
Facebookās apparently had many complaints about this since 2014, so Iām hardly the first to encounter it. Blaming malware for their own databasing issues is cheap, but enough people will believe itāeven with my mistrust of these big Silicon Valley firms I still did their malware scan, not thinking I had a choice if I wanted to access the site again. What it really did during the scan is anyoneās guess.
Iād rather they come clean and tell people: you are allowed x posts a day, x links a day, and x photos and videos a day. I can work around that. But if they came clean about this and the number of click-farm workers and bots plaguing the site, what will that do to their share price?
And isn’t it ironic I can presently share more, and have more freedom of speech, on Weibo, monitored by the Chinese Communist Party?
PS.: As of the last week of April, I have had two reports that deleting cookies does not work, but switching browsers does. Facebook appears to find a way to identify you, your regular browser and your IP address together, without cookies.
P.PS.: Mid-May, and from my other thread on this topic, in the post-postscripts: āAndrew McPherson was hit with this more recently, with Facebook blocking the cookie-deleting method in some cases, and advises, “If you get this, you will need to change your Facebook password to something very long (a phrase will do), delete and clear your browsers cache and history, then delete your browser, then renew your IP address to a different number and then reinstall your browsers.” If you cannot change your IP address but are using a router, then he suggests refreshing the address on that. Basically, Facebook is making it harder and harder for us to work around their bug. Once again, if you sign on using a different account using the same āinfectedā computer, there are no problemsāwhich means the finger of blame should remain squarely pointed at Facebook.’
P.P.P.PS.: November 30: it appears waiting it out is the best option for those who don’t want to mess around under the bonnet. Shawn Picker, in the comments, says to expect a five-day wait.
P.P.P.P.PS.: May 9, 2017: On the other post on this subject on my blog, a user called David suggested modifying your headers and to fool Facebook into thinking you are using another type of device. In comment no. 66 below, Stephan confirms that it works and gives more details about it. Check it out!
