[Verizon Galaxy Note 3 General] DutchDogg54:
I wouldn't take such a bleak outlook as that. First and foremost we need to remember that the culprit here is Verizon...Samsung devices on T-Mobile & Sprint have unlockable bootloaders so it's certainly not the manufacturer - it's clearly the carrier. Yes, Samsung is responsible for Knox, which is a pain, but we've proven in our own device's case how that isn't too big a stumbling block to overcome. If we had an unlocked bootloader Knox would be a fly to swat out of our way on the path to complete and total freedom to mod whatever we'd like. It's only because of the locked bootloader that we are stuck using EXTREMELY bright people like [MENTION=4243514]Hashcode[/MENTION], [MENTION=2348906]designgears[/MENTION], [MENTION=4395895]BeansTown106[/MENTION], [MENTION=4854133]bajasur[/MENTION], [MENTION=631273]Chainfire[/MENTION] etc. to create mind-bending work-arounds for these complicated and enterprise-level security systems.

What I would say is that the latest word out of Google with their acquisition of a company called Divide, which specializes in enterprise security and the like, is that the need for something like Knox is diminishing on a device manufacturer basis. I do have some severe doubts as to whether Samsung would disband their new corporate security blanket, but if Divide has software that does what it says it does on every android device out of the box there may be redundancy issues having both that & Knox running at the same time. I have a feeling Google will win should there be a conflict and Samsung will then drop Knox & use Divide.

This still doesn't solve the bootloader & root issue some are facing, I realize. The unfortunate truth about that is that some carriers, Verizon especially, have taken a stand that unlocked bootloaders aren't worth their trouble and decided to offer "developer editions" which carry no risk to them and they don't have to subsidize. I understand their decision being a business manager/owner myself, but I, of course, understand the frustration as a user and the true owner of the device.

To directly talk to your point - No, this isn't he end of the line for the Note 3 or any galaxy device. Just look at what Kingo was able to do with being able to root our previous builds. There's a chance they or someone else will figure out how to root NC4 and possibly many more builds going forward on many more devices. There's also the potential for further leaked builds like our NC2 which is a wide open playground of potential in an otherwise maximum security prison that is Verizon. And the fact that Kingo, VRoot & others aren't somebody like us posting our stuff on XDA for the whole world to see (open source), then the root exploit is drastically less likely to be patched by Verizon. Ultimately, I don't like trusting the root process to somebody without a face and without access to their code in an open source way, but that may be the final frontier of smartphone rooting - that we must mask our path to victory so the evil Big Red don't follow our breadcrumbs and trap us in a no-root prison.

The true way to stop this bullying by Verizon is the old "talk with your wallet" technique where we don't buy devices with a locked bootloader. The problem is Verizon has a perfect fallback for all those people. They'll say, "Sure you can root (assuming someone figures out a way) & do all that stuff - just buy our developer edition! Sure, it will be a ton more money but that's the cost of being an evil rooting hacker!" And since that's not what we want - we want our subsidies and the ability to treat it like our own personal hardware - we are at an impasse. For many people the only choice for decent network is Verizon (that's me) so for me and a lot of other people, we can't take a stand and choose the provider that offers unlockable bootloaders and subsidies, so we're forced to deal with Verizon's shenanigans. It sucks, it really does...but we're stuck...that is, until T-Mobile or Sprint pick up their game and provide a network with even a fraction as much coverage and speed as Verizon...but that's, in my opinion, something that's years off, if ever.