The IT Nerd

When I first got my 16″ MacBook Pro, one of the apps that I used to make my experience better was Bartender. I wrote about it here and I really liked the app as it minimizes what’s on my menu bar and is smart enough to surface icons when an action is required. However, I’ve stopped using this app for the following reasons:

• Apparently the app sold roughly two months ago with nobody being told about it.
• Then a Reddit thread appeared with screen shots from MacUpdater warning about the owners of Bartender being replaced.
• Bartender’s new owners replied to the Reddit thread. But their answers seem suspect to many. Yours truly included. But the core message from the new owners is that there was a certificate change in the latest version and nothing more. By certificate change, I assume it’s the developer certificate.

This led to a Reddit user investigating the current version of Bartender versus the previous version put out by the previous owner of the app. What this user found isn’t reassuring:

That’s not good to say the least. That alone is a reason to uninstall this app ASAP. But actually, there’s one other reason that you should uninstall the app. More digging by Reddit users has found that the company who bought this app is a company named Applause, and in their FAQ, they say this:

So the way I read this, it appears on the surface that this company buys apps and never updates them. Instead they simply monetize the app as it is. That’s a major red flag to me. Thus I uninstalled the app this morning and I’ll spend some time researching alternatives as I would like to better manage my menu bar.

This whole situation highlights the fact that you need to be careful when you install apps on your computer. And you need to be on your toes in case a situation like this pops up. I say that because not being on your toes can end badly for you. On top of that, I now know that Applause exists, and I now know what their game is. And as a result you can be sure that I’ll be avoiding their apps going forward as they seem to be at best sketchy.

This entry was posted on June 5, 2024 at 10:37 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.