With a name like Superfish, you know it’s good… uh, well, pre-installed malware. Here’s PCWorld’s Brad Chacos:

Lenovo’s been caught going a bit too far in its quest for bloatware money, and the results have put its users at risk. The company has been preloading Superfish, a “visual search” tool that includes adware that fakes the encryption certificates for every HTTPS-protected site you visit, on its PCs since at least the middle of 2014. Essentially, the software conducts a man-in-the-middle attack to fill the websites you visit with ads, and leaves you vulnerable to hackers in its wake.

You may be asking right now, “Say, John, did you just buy your son a Lenovo?” Why, yes, Christine! I did! Thanks for asking! And that explains what I’ve been doing this morning.

As it turns out, I had already uninstalled the program Superfish masquerades as because I went through the Windows uninstall control panel and was like “VisualDiscovery? Never heard of you. BOOM, YOU’RE GONE. HIT THE BRICKS. YOUR SERVICES ARE NO LONGER REQUIRED AT THIS COMPANY.” That, however, does not remove the root certificate the program uses to ply its mal wares, the certificate which is easy prey to man-in-the-middle attacks. Chacos explains how to get rid of that.

If you’re using a Lenovo computer, you can browse to this site to see if Lenovo has pre-screwed your pooch. Enjoy your user experience!

Myke Hurley’s Inquisitive has started a special series on iOS app development. Looks to be good.

Writing for SamMobile, Abhijeet M. says Samsung will be scrapping a lot of its own software.

What’s interesting is that Samsung has apparently pre-installed quite a few Microsoft apps, possibly as a result of the deal the two companies made recently in relation to the patent royalty case they were embroiled in.

If true, it’s a smart move for both Samsung and Microsoft. Samsung’s software has always been crappy and undercutting Google’s services works for both of them.

John Kirk:

I notice a consistent pattern in Apple’s critics. Those that understand Apple the least,

Indeed, the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Lex got a dog. Now our fatherhood podcast is a dog podcast. Please update your expectations accordingly.

This week we talk about Photos before we get back to our favorite topic which is Apple Watch fan fiction.

I keep seeing “THE END OF SUBSIDIES WILL DOOM THE IPHONE!” promulgated and so far it’s proving to be utter nonsense just like every other iPhone doom scenario.

This is some real Kremlinology and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Sameer Singh in a post comparing the first two years of smartphones, tablets and smartwatches:

It is clear to me that smartwatch technology has improved significantly over the past year. But the fact that this has had no impact on consumer adoption should be worrying.

I don’t have any idea how many Watches Apple will sell but the bar is set pretty low for Apple to jump over it. There were only 4.6 million smartwatches sold in 2014 and with good reason.

(Via Ben Bajarin)

Charles Arthur estimates the per-handset profitability of the top Android device makers and Apple. It explains why Apple now has 93 percent of mobile profitability.