Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk'

Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by joshstrange on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @02:57PM (#9500998)

It's the same problem with Android currently which is that when every manufacturer is using the same OS they have to find a way to differentiate. In Android this means custom skins, custom apps, and the like. On Windows this means "free" antivirus, custom apps, and the like. It would be nice if they all just completed on hardware but then it's really a race to the bottom.

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by jgroszko on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @03:57PM (#9501411)

Do consumers actually differentiate on these extras? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "Yeah I picked up a Lenovo laptop because the antivirus they package is better than Dell's" or "I got a Samsung phone because their skins are better than HTC's" I'd love to see the market research that backs that idea up...

I thought the real reason manufacturers do this is because they're in a very low margin industry. For computers they get some deal with software companies to pre-install their product, and similar for cell phones with service providers.

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by yellowapple on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @04:50PM (#9501706)

I'm not sure if the "free" antivirus counts as "differentiating", since it's almost always - without fail - either McAfee or Norton.

With that said, differentiating by custom UIs on top of the base platform (i.e. the Android approach) would be much better, and would be actually-useful differentiation rather than a matter of "well which company's going to fuck me over the least with their preinstalled shitware?".

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by joshstrange on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @04:57PM (#9501768)

I personally dislike custom UI's shipped by the phone manufacturer because more often than not it leads to delays in OS updates due to them needing to adapt their UI to core changes. Customization (by manufacturers) can come at a very high price for the end user in terms of security and upgradability.

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by yellowapple on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @06:14PM (#9502137)

Right, but that's leaps and bounds better than "free" McAfee, no matter which way you skin it.

This also isn't exactly universally true. HTC was pretty responsive in getting Lollipop out to my One M8, for example, even with its whole "Sense UI" shebang.

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by dheera on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @10:35PM (#9503017)

Not to mention I find 90% of those custom UIs look horrible and cluttered compared to Google's original design.

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by _xander on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @03:29PM (#9501223)

Their perspective is that they're adding value through software (i.e. without spending more money on hardware). Not that I agree with this line of reasoning...

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by bediger4000 on Wednesday May 06, 2015 @04:13PM (#9501493)

Are you certain of this perspective or is this your best guess? I see people say this type of thing all the time, and I don't see any official statements corroborating them.

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Re:Lenovo: researchers find 'massive security risk' by _xander on Thursday May 07, 2015 @07:08AM (#9504195)

I picked it up from here: http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we-think/rep...

It's still only one sort of business strategy. Not every hardware company is necessarily pursuing this line.

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