Patrick Wardle has confirmed on X that he did not, after all, review the new Bartender from a security perspective as he did not have time to do so (following a claim from MacUpdater that he did – they did ask him to, but he didn’t).
https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/1798385942237204854
These posts do not suggest a different owner but only the fact that the developer certificate changed twice in a short time span and that Applause has likely set up an LLC for Bartender in Delaware (as the previous developer was based in the UK).
I know. I thought I had deleted and not posted that. Very strange.
Anyway, I have now removed Bartender. I’ll be trying both Better Touch Tool, which I already have, and Ice, which is sitting in my downloads folder, later this evening.
So, did MacUpdater lie when they said he reviewed it, or did they somehow misunderstand? I suspect the latter, but they started allowing downloads of versions from the new owner based on Wardle’s non-existent security review.
It seems to be a misunderstanding between them. If it were not for the MacUpdater team, who knows when we would have found out about Bartender’s change of ownership?
I don’t think it’s their job to protect us from rogue or suspicious updates (nowhere do they promise that), yet MacUpdater did issue a warning on this occasion.
It will be interesting to see if Setapp ditches Bartender based on this. I doubt Bartender will ever recover its popularity after this fiasco.
ChatGPT prompt for Ben’s statement: I’m three months overdue explaining that I sold off a company and didn’t tell its customers what happened. I’m under pressure from the new owners as a public relations crisis erupted. Please write a statement for me.
I won’t paste what ChatGPT came up with, but it’s equally believable and sincere as Ben’s statement.
I’ve no doubt that as part of the agreement to sell Bartender, there will be a no disparagement clause which would prevent him from saying anything negative about the new owners.
The new owners have been evasive and added code to new builds that sends user data to a third party, and a statement from someone who no longer owns or controls the app doesn’t change that.
I’ve been a huge fan of Bartender for years, but I’m done with it unless it gets sold again to a reputable dev.
There’s a very stark contrast between this and how the short controversy over Downie played out. The developer of that app did something very stupid, but was open, clear and genuine in the apology. It seemed to pass the BS test and most people were content with that. This on the other hand…
Completely agree. The Downie Dev quickly onwned it and was transparent, which was good enough for me. The new Bartender owners have had enough time to implement new features (telemetry), but appear to lack the time or desire to address the community since this has been discovered.
I’ve also removed Bartender and will explore other options.
This Ben guy sounds like a complete slimeball. I will be nuking Bartender from my system completely and actively recommending against anyone installing Bartender in the future.
I have since moved to Ice and uninstalled Bartender. I paid for version 4 which was valid for version 5 but paid for another license which was lifetime.
There is nothing like this feeling of bait and switch.
Likewise. Bartender has gone to the great bit bucket in the sky.
Ice, Ice, Baby!
There are a few things on the Ice roadmap that I will appreciate once implemented, but Ice works today for what I need such a utility to do
And thus, for me at least, the saga ends.
I’m going to give them week to come clean and prove they are responsible about it. I do not like the fact that they’ve already added user-monitoring Amplitude before even telling us they took over. Like I said, I’m giving them a week to explain. I’d hate to move on because there several Bartender features that are very useful to me.
I suppose it’s a good question that Bartender apparently did not need to use amplitude until new owners entered the scene. So whats the need for this?
On the other hand amplitude is everywhere and so some in the software industry probably consider it the norm. I use NextDNS with blockers and amplitude probably accounts for 25% of all domains blocked.
It’s a little different but I find it shocking that on a web page I can have 10 plus domains blocked and they are not doing anything good for me as these web pages work just fine.
They are hopefully doing something good for the other side of the equation, i.e the publishers themselves (most probably they monetize this data by selling it to third parties for programmatic targeting and advertising). I am ok with user behaviour tracking for reading online newspapers for free and similar stuff, but in the case of a paid app like Bartender I find it more difficult to swallow.
I’m not interested in apps that send telemetry, especially when it’s sneaked into an update and has full access to my OS.
This has made me realize I don’t need an app like this at all. I can disable some of the menu bar icons I don’t use (e.g., KM, Alfred, Shortcuts, and AppleScript), and now the icons don’t even get close to the notch. It’s one less app taking resources and interfering with upgrades and MacOS updates, which was my main gripe with Bartender as it was always the first app to break when I updated to a new version of MacOS.
I am wondering if there any alternative that can show the hidden items in a bar below the menu bar, same way Bartender does?