PSA: Bartender Mac App Under New Ownership, But Lack of Transparency Raises Concerns
PSA: Bartender Mac App Under New Ownership, But Lack of Transparency Raises Concerns
Popular Mac app Bartender appears to have been quietly sold approximately two months ago, with neither the prior owner nor the current owner...
I've been a paying user since 2015. This makes me sad, as it's one of my most beloved utilities and this isn't a good look. I'll keep running it without updating until it stops working or I find a replacement that I like. Also:
https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/06/bartender-has-a-new-owner/
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Macs making people pay for mundane tasks, typical. I recently switched from windows to mac and it's CRAZY how many things you need to pay for via an app to get done when compared to free or built-in alternatives you get on Windows.
I tried loving iOS too but it's just too damn funny that same apps are paid on iOS whereas they're free on Android.
This might be due to how easy Apple makes it to implement this sort of thing. Even if the app isn’t on the App Store.
On iOS, apps must be on the App Store, which requires being enrolled in the Apple developer program. I imagine developers then make their apps paid to cover this.
Examples?
BetterTouchTool, TempMonitor, Al Dente, Alfred, Little Snitch, literally 90% of my apps are all paid, it's genuinely insane. It's not like they're bad, or anything, I miss them when I'm not using macOS, but Jesus Christ..
Alfred is just slightly better Spotlight or slightly worse Raycast (which you can totally use for free just fine)
Many of these have good FOSS alternatives. Bettertouchtool does a million things, but check out rectangle, middleclick for some of the features. TempMonitor has several alternatives but if you’re mostly after menu bar widgets, there’s one called “stats”. Al dente is free, though Apple has something like this built in already but it’s heuristic based and less predictable. After building an 80% charge limiter into iOS and iPadOS I bet this will show up in a future macOS version. Lulu is an alternative to little snitch.
Most apps offer basic features for free, but the truly useful features are always behind a paywall with Apple products. This is the case with iOS too and you can't deny that. Whether it's games, apps or basic features like dark mode for browsers. Like why do I gotta pay for dark mode in Safari in 2024? Bruh.
And it does the other way too. There are tons of big features missing from Microsoft’s ecosystem that exist in the their competitor’s products.
I work for a tech company that is a Microsoft shop, and all the Silicon Valley hires that are used to macOS and Slack complain every damn day about feature gaps.