Please respect, I don’t want to bring back the vitriol of that thread, but just the pure sensibility with regards to my question. As I have stayed with Bartender, I just want to know if this update puts the concerns to rest.
That’s all. No vitriol. Just to understand if we can all go back to using Bartender an app we all like again
This bit, “We’re a small team of indie devs based in NYC …”, is partially true. They are located in NYC. But the LinkedIn profiles the five people that are employed are not indicative of them being developers.
And this bit, “We are enhancing privacy …” is a bit disingenuous, as they knew that 100% of the users would encounter issues with permissions, as they changed the certificate, requiring permissions updates. Perhaps they could have explained what was happening and why, to head off said issues?
Maybe if their website listed the apps they’ve worked on, and those they’ve acquired and continued updating, instead of a marketing pitch for devs to sell out to them. And maybe if they hadn’t littered the Bartender blog with obvious SEO BS, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.
But there are just too many red flags to accept what they say at face value.
This patch addresses the concern that new analytics had been added. That was the only significant change to the actual Bartender software post-acquisition, other than the approval of the new developer certificate.
I still have it installed as I didn’t have time to switch to something else (and I’m probably waiting for Ice to roll out the secondary bar support), but I have it downgraded to the last known ‘safe’ version with automatic updates off.
It’s not a mission-critical app that always needs to be up-to-date.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried Bartender on Sequoia beta to see if works? It’s usually the OS updates that have been breaking Bartender.
Doesn’t resolve it for me, and I’ve since had a refund issued (I’d only upgraded to Bartender 5 recently) and moved on.
Everyone has a different level of tolerance for nonsense and/or risk. It’s a huge red flag to me that a company acquired an app and the first thing they did was not a) communicate that publicly, or b) fix any immediate pending bugs, but instead introduce intrusive tracking software that no-one had asked for. Bartender as an app, because of its very nature, requires extensive permissions on a Mac and security and trust is extremely important when we give that level of permissions.
It’s like inviting someone into your house and letting them touch stuff, and then them pocketing your house key. We’ve noticed and taken the key back, but do you really want them in your house after that?
While removing Amplitude is good, it’s still not clear to me, from the second screenshot (“Improvements”) what is left running in the background. Is it a native macOS service? Is it some piece included with Bartender? If that’s the case, what is it’s purpose? What’s the meaning of “we now remove Bartender permissions automatically”?
I kept bartender installed on a previous version, but have this morning uninstalled it after reading the latest release notes.
Whilst removing amplitude is a step in the right direction, as others have said I’m not sure what they’ve done with regarding permissions and if it’s not clear I don’t trust it.
I’ve installed the beta of Ice with the second bar and it’s working well enough for me to use.
I am answering myself to recognize that, perhaps, I am being extremely cautious here because, well, the loss of trust. I am probably using other apps in my computer that run more telemetry than what Bartender is collecting right now with the same lack of transparency. It’s just the way it’s been managed that tells a lesson here.
Still using it via Setapp which has yet to update it to any of post-acquisition versions. If it does update, I will be monitoring it via Little Snitch and will cut off any outgoing connections for the time being.
I am hoping to get some time off work soon and re-evaluate which apps I absolutely need, hoping that in the end, I won’t need a menu bar organiser at all.
It is easy yes, you can see a list with all apps that have outgoing or incoming connections. You can choose no do thing, allow them all or block them all. The Little Snitch agent currently got an energy impact of 1.95 over the last 12 hours on my Mac mini, however my Mac has been on for about 9-10 hours. I’ve used it on my MacBook Pro too with similar results.
It works fine with 1Blocker, it even works well with AdGuard these days, which uses a local VPN (transparent proxy). In the past there should to be conflicts between the two, but not anymore.
TL;DR The battery hit is minimal from my experience, and the software doesn’t conflict with 1Blocker or AdGuard.
MacUpdater still warns users about this update and links to the MacRumors article. That ‘small team of independent developers’ will need to work much harder to even begin to restore the trust they lost.
