BartenderThen came the Bartender fiasco. The original developer, Ben Surtees, sold the Mac menu bar utility to a development company called Applause, which released an update with a new signing certificate for a company called “App Sub 1 LLC.” The new certificate triggered warnings with MacUpdater, and when Bartender users examined the update, they found it had added a data analytics framework called Amplitude. In short, it looked like Bartender had been sold to a sketchy company that planned to take advantage of its Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions to hack users. Emails to the original developer were returned as undeliverable, and even after Surtees seemingly posted an explanation and apology, many felt that it could have been forged.When I tracked down Surtees’s personal email address and contacted him, he confirmed that his statement was genuine and said that Applause had added the Amplitude frame purely “to get an idea of the user base.” Applause now says it has removed the Amplitude framework from the latest test build. Whether or not Bartender is back to its pre-acquisition state, Applause has destroyed years of goodwill by failing to be transparent about the acquisition and the reasons behind the desire to add analytics. The company has finally published a post admitting its missteps and apologizing, but it may be too late for many.
Gast
