Popular Mac App Bartender's New Owner Has Burnt Years of Good-Will With a Lack of Transparency 25
An anonymous reader shares a report: Popular app Bartender was quietly bought, and a shady certificate replacement, insertion of invasive telemetry, and a lack of transparent responses by the new owners has shaken confidence in the Mac community. Menu bar organization tool Bartender has been around for a long time. For most of its life, it had an excellent reputation, and a responsive developer who communicated clearly with users. That appears to have changed, recently. It all started with a quiet pair of app certificate shifts which went mostly unnoticed.
That is, until app monitoring service MacUpdater found out, and started asking questions. They posted a warning about the app, saying that "The company and developer behind Bartender was replaced in a silent and dubious matter." But, there's a lot more to the story than just that warning. CoreCode, the developer of MacUpdater, did a great deal of research on the new owners and the app situation prior to posting the warning. They detailed their discoveries in a Reddit thread on the matter. Research performed before the warning pointed out that blog entries on the Bartender website shifted to heavily search engine optimized content. This is in contrast to the prior informational entries previously posted by original developer Ben Surtees.
That is, until app monitoring service MacUpdater found out, and started asking questions. They posted a warning about the app, saying that "The company and developer behind Bartender was replaced in a silent and dubious matter." But, there's a lot more to the story than just that warning. CoreCode, the developer of MacUpdater, did a great deal of research on the new owners and the app situation prior to posting the warning. They detailed their discoveries in a Reddit thread on the matter. Research performed before the warning pointed out that blog entries on the Bartender website shifted to heavily search engine optimized content. This is in contrast to the prior informational entries previously posted by original developer Ben Surtees.
Common scenario (Score:3)
I keep thinking about the scenario of something being "approved" and then introducing shady things afterwards. For example, you go through the approval process to get your mobile app into the marketplace and then after approved, have an update or remote code execution that then does bad things.
Re:Common scenario (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I thought I had read an article a while back about how shady companies were buying established apps by small developers in the app stores then changing the app to do nefarious things like crypto mining and spyware/malware.
That's been a common occurrence with popular browser extensions; a bit less so with actual applications like this case.
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For example, you go through the approval process to get your mobile app into the marketplace and then after approved, have an update or remote code execution that then does bad things.
It doesn't work like that. The app stores have to approve updates before the updates are published in the stores. It's possible that there is less scrutiny of updates than new apps, but it's not zero.
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I worked on a mobile app that pulled stuff from a database, and I don't recall there ever being any checks on the DB content after the initial approval. Maybe that's changed, it's been a few years since I worked on that project.
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When I worked on an Android app, one time we had to get a senior Google exec to talk to the app approval team before an update to our app was published. Fortunately, the CEO of the company I was working for was a very successful and well-connected person and could pull some strings.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't work like that. The app stores have to approve updates before the updates are published in the stores. It's possible that there is less scrutiny of updates than new apps, but it's not zero.
Given the sheer number of apps on Apple's store (Google's as well), there's no way most updates are getting more than a cursory, automated review before being approved.
as a mac owner (Score:4, Interesting)
not so much "burnt" - more like "cashed in on" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the original owner was well-compensated for the size of the app's user-base and amount of trust they had in the app.
This sort of thing often happens when an app, a product, a brand, or a service is sold. There's no guarantee that the new owners will have the same integrity as the original owner, and it's often done quietly without public notice, to maximize value.
The flock is worth more if the sheep are fat for slaughter.
Re:not so much "burnt" - more like "cashed in on" (Score:4, Insightful)
I appreciate this line in the article:
Reddit user "Ordinary_Delivery_79" claims to be the new owner of Bartender. They said that this is a normal process, and they should have been more transparent about the certificate shift.
Your business relies on this software and "new owner is Reddit user..." is hardly a confidence inspiring statement about anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Doubly so when the username is just one of Reddit's randomly generated word strings rather than an actual online handle to which the person behind it might have some amount of emotional investment.
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More than customizing the menubar, it is the only tool I've ever found useful to manage the proliferation of menubar entries. Besides allowing for better ordering, it allows you to determine which entries go in the main/visible menubar, and which you only want to see in the second pop-down menubar. It really was (hopefully still is) an irreplaceable tool for me.
Mergers and Acquisitions strikes again! (Score:2)
GE Appliances, Westinghouse, RCA, Sylvania, half the clothing brands, half of the lawn equipment brands, over half of the food brands, and Breyer's 'Ice Cream' - fuck Unilever. Wait what was the topic?
Re: (Score:2)
This reminds me of when I was looking for a new ISP. I picked one, called them, and then it went surreal:
- I'd like to switch providers, I'm interested in your offer.
- Ok, lets take a look... You already are our customer, what can I actually do for you?
- What? My provider's name is $NAME1, you're $NAME2, what are you talking about?
- We bought $NAME3, which had bought $NAME1 a few years previously.
Re: (Score:2)
One of my favorite things about having a domestic partner is the annual "give me pricing that doesn't suck" conversation:
- Hey, my bill went up, what can we do about that?
- Nothing, that was a one time promo for new customers.
- But I see that same price on your webpage right now.
- That's only for new customers.
- I understand. Can we please cancel the service?
- Where will you go?
- My partner is going to sign up in her name to get the pricing you refuse to give me.
- Hold on. [few minutes delay] I've
Asking the important questions (Score:2)
Does the app have a good Sidecar recipe?
Pinned to version 5.0.48 (Score:3)
Well, I just disabled auto updates in Setapp to keep Bartender at the recommended version (5.0.48). I hope I can stay on that version indefinitely.
The Now Standard Enshitification of Tech (Score:1)
This is likely just another example of the past, current and future reality of trying to wring a bigger buck out of whatever investors can get their hands on.
I don't begrudge the original developer cashing out.
At some point, it's just time to move on.
Last good version (Score:2)
This is the last version signed by the original developer. Download it while you can and keep it safe.
https://www.macbartender.com/B... [macbartender.com] 5.dmg
Re: (Score:2)
But Teh Updates! (Score:2)
Please tell me again why I must keep all my software constantly updated (Security!) with auto-updates. "But you might get pwned!" Hasn't happened yet. Oh, maybe that's due to the customized Hardware firewall, and not using Javascript except where absolutely necessary.