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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Not the submitter, but I installed this a couple days ago to replace Bartender. For those not following along at home, the Bartender author just sold it to some sketchy app mill. It’s an app that legitimately requires screen recording permissions to work. I trusted the old author’s reputation. I have zero trust in the own owner.

Ice isn’t as good yet. It’s not nearly so configurable. For example, you can either hide all icons or none. You can’t decide to show some of them all the time. That’s a bummer. I’ll still happily accept that trade off to replace Bartender, which I’d previously purchased several versions of. It’s dead to me.

Great job so far, Ice. I hope you keep improving!

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> I trusted the old author’s reputation. I have zero trust in the own owner.

As of now, I have zero trust in the old author too. The lack of communication is the fault of both parties. Ben Surtees has caused serious damage to their own reputation. Any new software released under that name will have a hard time gaining trust and traction.

Probably one of the terms of sale. But choosing to receive even more money above protecting the privacy of those who previously paid you money and trusted you is pretty dastardly IMO.

I would say that if it was one of the terms of the sale (we don’t know), that’s even worse. If a buyer makes that request, the seller should be even more conscious of “who the heck am I selling to?”

And who are you to slander a named person and publicly question his reputation, for selling his own business that he created to somebody else? Your behaviour is not proportional to what has happened. It is an icon utility.

Which part of the statement is slander?

Saying that somebody has a damaged reputation.

That is called an opinion. It is subjective yet demonstrable by all the people voicing their unhappiness. That’s what a reputation is: the beliefs and opinions generally held about someone.

Why do you not acknowledge any of the points made? Selling a business is a big deal and an announcement should be made. Not doing so is at best short sided and ignorant.

Other people are addressing those points better than I would. I think it is out of proportion to denounce and name the individual developer. Why does everything have to turn into a witch hunt? And why do you have to call me ignorant for not thinking like you?

Would any hacker be proud to explain to their grand parents that they got very upset that their icon hiding app was sold?

Nobody called you ignorant and the only personal attack here was made by you.

I misunderstood your post. But I haven't personally attacked anybody.

Everything turns into a witch hunt because people in groups are stupid and unempathetic, and live in a fantasy world.

Good on you for having a grounded take, and realising how feeble minded it is of people to denounce the developer and label them as untrustworthy.

I can bet on my life that the majority of these loud complainers have probably never built or contributed anything of value to the world, let alone sold something and gone through a software acquisition.

I have basically no faith in people on social media, but please don’t feel like your alone in your thoughts I agree with everything you’ve said here

Furthermore most people probably haven’t built macOS apps and are unfamiliar with the permissions model regarding screen recording - it may be that it is actually required for good functioning to have this permission. I haven’t built macOS apps, but I’ve built plenty of browser extensions and know from experience that permissions are much scarier than what the developer is actually using them for in most cases. Like with most things: people are ignorant. People are arrogant. And people don’t think for themselves. This all gets amplified when they group up.

And you speak from your own experience selling businesses I take it?

Libel is in printed form.

Slander is in oral or spoken form.

Saying harmful things about someone is neither libel nor slander if those statements are factual. It's only libel or slander if the statements that are made are false.

IANAL but... It is my understanding that statements can be considered "per se" libel or slander even if they are expressed as opinion as long as they are made negligently or with malice and they cause reputational harm.

> And who are you

A paying customer of Bartender.

> to slander

It is not slander to say you distrust someone.

> a named person

Ben’s name was already public. Bartender was published under “Surtees Studios”, after all. Ben has also appeared in at least one podcast. Trusting Bartender meant trusting Ben, the developer, the person.

> for selling his own business that he created

That’s not what’s in question. No one is blaming Ben for selling Bartender, the complaint is that it was done in secret. And it would’ve continue to be a secret were it not for a feature in MacUpdater that someone noticed.

> It is an icon utility.

No, it is not. It is an app that requests Screen Recording, Accessibility, and Location permissions to do its job. Thus it is an app which requires a high degree of trust. That the new owners added an analytics framework to, and who knows what else. This case is awfully similar to when a developer sells a browser extension to someone shady because the profit is in the user-base.

> It is not slander to say you distrust someone.

Of course it is slander to say that somebody's reputation is damaged. Especially when it's not a public figure. Just that somebody's name is public, doesn't make them a public figure. And you even continue. Step out of the mob frenzy for a while and try to look at how you are behaving from a higher perspective. Is it right of you to treat a person like that, because he sold his own business? It matters little you once purchased a product from him. Software change owners all the time.

Until there is definite proof of malevolence you should calm down, as should the other hackers. This business has the possibility of becoming a great embarrassment for Hacker News in the future.

> Of course it is slander to say that somebody's reputation is damaged.

Of course it is not. Reputations are, by definition, opinions. And opinions are subjective.

> because he sold his own business?

If you’re not going to engage in good faith and will just keep repeating the exact same argument after its inaccuracy has been pointed out to you, I don’t see the point in continuing the conversation.

Engage with the words, not the strawman in your head.

> you should calm down

I am calm. Again, you’re projecting what you want to see, not the reality.

It doesn't matter that it's your opinion. Naming a person as having a damaged reputation is very serious. That can and will have real life consequences, all for some bickering about a utility tool for MacOS. Be proportional. You wouldn't publicly name some other person as having a damaged reputation in real life, so why do you consider it acceptable to do here?

And you shouldn't give apps permission to record your screen. That's your responsibility.

> And you shouldn't give apps permission to record your screen. That's your responsibility.

Clearly, they already know this. They're exercising this responsibility by ceasing to use an app that they no longer trust with their privacy.

And publicly flaming the original author. Just because more people are upvoting you and the others flaming the author of Bartender person does not make them correct. It is a mob after all, the only reasonable person in this discussion is Carlos. People are incredibly toxic in groups. Stop the groupthink!

Why can’t people be reasonable online

I don't think I was unreasonable, as that was my only comment on this thread, but oh well.

It's libelous to write false statements with the intent to harm the reputation of private person; but _observing_ that their reputation appears damaged? That seems like a stretch. Personally, I don't wish either the original developer or the current developer ill; but given that the software requires screen recording permissions in order to operate, the communication issued by both should be thorough, sensitive to the privacy and security issues involved, and open. None of that is the case here.

You do not seem familiar with US slander laws and precedent.

What does the US and their laws have to do with this?

Slander is a legal term with a specific definition in the US court system. For you to accuse someone in the US of slander against someone else in the US is only logical to interpret as "x person could sue y person for slander". Otherwise why use the legal term?

Everybody you talk to online is not in the United States or from the United States. Maybe in the beginning of the 90s. Open your mind.

Thank you for saying this. The mob is incredibly dangerous, and one of the reasons I have ZERO online presence outside of hackernews. People are dangerous and cultish in groups, especially so online.

People saying the original software author is untrustworthy live in a fucking whimsical fairyland. And probably have never built anything worthy of a sale

...that has screen recording privileges on its users' systems.

It's not shady to sell a business. It's not shady to have screen recording privileges because that's legitimately needed to provide the functionality. It is shady to sell that product to some unknown group without notifying your customers.

I trust(ed) Ben Surtees to run his software on my machine with enhanced privileges. I'm not thrilled that someone else controls it now, and that I'd probably never have known that if I didn't follow tech news closely.

It was an icon utility that can record your screen

From the blog:

I understand that the transition hasn’t been entirely smooth. Recently, there was a change in the signing certificate for the app, and unfortunately, this change wasn’t communicated properly to you, our loyal users.

https://www.macbartender.com/b5blog/A-New-Chapter-for-Barten...

previous discussion on the hidden sales:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40584606

> For example, you can either hide all icons or none.

I thought so at first too, but it’s just a confusing UI. The documentation says:

> Simply Command + drag your menu bar items to rearrange them.

What isn’t said is that this dragging also allows you to keep some of the items permanently showing. Anything you drag to the right of that double arrow icon will stay there.

Good thing it’s been added to README now, I was similarly stumped two days ago and only found out from the issue tracker: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40580582 The instructions really should be in the app, though.

Indeed, I had to 'call a friend' to figure it out. I knew it was possible, but couldn't figure out how. Loving the minimalism of it now, though.

I swear I tried that. Guess not! In that case, it covers 95% of what I used in Bartender.

It's really weird, non intuitive but once you figure it out, it's great. For example, if you cmd drag something, it puts you back into edit mode. The chevron design system is weird: they need to just mimic the coloring they show in the README.

I didn’t know Bartender was sold. I thought it was fishy to need screen recording permissions but I assumed it was because of “security” features of the new macOS/m series chip/whatever so I just let it go because I trusted the Bartender dev.

Uninstalled. What a shame.

Bartender did need screen recording permissions for certain features to work under the more locked down security model in macOS 11+. That happened well before Bartender was sold.

Ice (and other menu bar managers) require the same permissions - your assumption was correct and Bartender has needed those permissions for a while.

Hidden Bar doesn't, I'm guessing the screen recording permission is needed for showing on hover.

It does need screen recording permissions because trying to do what Bartender does on a closed down system like macOS is inevitably going to require a hack.

The issue is we trusted the dev because we knew who he was and he'd have an angry mob after him if he was caught doing something sketchy. Now that it's sold to an unknown third party, there's no one to hold accountable for this software we're trusting with screen recording permissions on our machines.

The Reddit thread for context [0].

I sent an email to the original author with my feedback. I can understand why, but I got an autoreply that the mailbox was no longer monitored (even though it's still his personal domain). The things that transpired in the transition are all things I would expect an indie dev to not do. Ultimately my message to Ben was that it was unfortunate how everything was handled and that customers weren't notified. I was a paying customer of Bartender. I'll never use the software again, nor will I buy anything from the original author.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/bartender_...

Argh, I didn't realize that the app was sold and I paid for the upgrade recently :( If I had known I wouldn't have. I wonder if this could be a case for a chargeback, since the owner silently sold the app

It’s missing a lot, especially for a MacBook with a notch. I went with ibar until ice or any other app gets more features that bartender had.

-Difficult to configure unless you don’t have a lot of apps in the top bar. -No way to scroll through the list. -Does not offer a way to show the extra icons in a bar that displays below. -No search functionality. This is something I used frequently. -Folders which were recently added to Bartender was a nice option.

I do hope the developer is planning on adding more features.

I just bought it a month ago for max support for a ridiculous price like 50eu :(

After many years of updates I've also bought the mega supporter license this year, which I deeply regret - not because of the money lost but because it seems that author has misused our trust.

Thanks for the heads up. I use bartender, I will replace it with this app.

Really satisfied with Ice. I've been a long-time Bartender user, but have thought that version 5 is a little slow and buggy. Ice does what I need it to do (hide/show icons) and it does it faster than Bartender. Not as many features, but my own needs are pretty simple.

> you can either hide all icons or none. You can’t decide to show some of them all the time.

This is a non-starter. I hope, with a renewed interest fueled by the Bartender sale and HN, the developers implement this as soon as possible.

Looks like I was wrong about that. The README was updated to explain how after I'd started using it.

Why do these apps require screen recording permissions to work? Just curious.

To get information about other apps' icons

If true, that's a wild permissions model

Among many. Apple’s security model has a lot of ups and downs like this. I gather any app that needs access to anything on the screen outside of itself requires “screen recording” permission. I know all of the Remote Desktop apps, as well as color sampling functions in browsers, Adobe’s apps, and all of the designer tools with similar functionality require it.

You wouldn't want your mouse driver, for example, being able to see _every_ piece of software in your menu bar by default without extra permissions?

The case for "I need to see what apps are in the menu bar" is so rare there's no setting for it -> "screen recording" is the closest one.

It isn't a permissions model, it's explicitly a hack.

Dozer [0] doesn't require any special permissions. I guess this is needed by Bartender because it creates a little pop-out menu that shows the icons somewhere else?

[0] https://github.com/aonez/Dozer/releases/tag/v4.2.1-silicon

To run a bunch of "hacks" that make it work better than the alternatives, I guess:

https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/PermissionInfo/

Thanks for flagging the sale of Bartender. As a long time user I had no idea and am saddened to hear the new. I'll be switching to Ice or another open source tool immediately.

Thanks for sharing this note, I completely missed this development. Sad to see what has become of this app.

You can always show some icons by moving them to the right of the open/close icon

This only works when you don’t have many icons. You can’t see ones that are hidden behind the notch. If you can, I missed this.

Ah yeah that's a good point. Don't know if this covers that use-case yet

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