Xtorrent Public Beta 2

I just use the freeware Bits on Wheels
http://www.bitsonwheels.com/

It's fast, native Cocoa, and watching the animation is actually entertaining!
Been a while since it was last updated... 11/19/2005 but it works fine.

Don't know about the author's reputation, never had to email him. Of course, if you pay for shareware or software in general you expect a certain amount of free support. But since BitTorrent is free, and there are many free GUI clients, why bother buying one from a shady developer?

Apple may behave arrogantly, but that comes from knowing right from wrong in matters of taste and design, and being unafraid to push for what they judge to be better. I get the feeling that Dave Watanabe, on the other hand, is a prick just because he's a prick. There's no redeeming perspectives on his arrogance.

Not to mention I've never seen Apple, or anyone else for that matter, so consistently ignore repeated (polite) requests for assistance, or so blatantly give paying customers the finger. Don't be surprised when your days-old registration key stops working and you never hear from him again, even though the little sh*t is posting to his blog so you *know* he's there. Don't give him a cent of your money and expect anything in return.

I don't know whether he is a jerk or not and its true that aquasition sucks bad. It's also unfortunate that he is in not into freeware or donationware, especially for something dealing with torrents and p2p. However, I find that xtorrent works really well. I haven't had any problems with it in the least. Transmission is ok, i guess (at least better than tomato torrent!), but its pretty basic and I like the built in search of xtorrent. It makes things fast and easy. sorry to disagree with everyone. but I guess jerks can make good software sometimes.

I don't know dave.

*shrug*

I do take a bit of, how do you say, "umbrage" of this notion about "making OSS pretty, then charging for it."

A great, HUGE chunk of what makes OSX

1. Go
2. Useful

...is built in this same exact way. When you see Apple talking up "New feature X" very often its a piece of OSS, Cocoa-fied lurking in the background.

And, ask any "man on the street" and they'll tell you that Apple is as "arrogant" as they come.

There is nothing wrong with this; "Free Software" at least in the GNU sense is meant to be "free as in speech"...average MacOS X users are perfectly free to download the source code to the myriad of tools out there, crack open the term and do an autoconf-style build, then use bash or what have you to run whatever it is...unwrapped, warts and all.

If you ask a lot of OSS devs *why* they don't put effort into user accessibility, good ui's, etc, they will tell you, honestly why this is:

Those things are "expensive" in terms of time, effort and resources. The software is free (as in speech and/or beer).

You do the math on that.

libTransmission doesn't do *anything* without a wrapper around it...even if that wrapper is a terminal-driven ncurses based "user interface"...so to say that "app so-and-so" is just a "pretty wrapper" around something is quite disingenuous, I feel.

Again, I don't know Dave, so none of this speaks to any Dave-related issues.

-K

Seriously, I got insulted by him for asking of Inquisior 3 is going to be free for all, forever. I wondered about it because I paid for it back then and wanted to be able to recommend it to some of my friends.

First, he deleted my comment in his blog asking that very question. He did not delete a single entry of gratitude and "cool, thanks" entries. Actually I emailed him a couple of months ago to thank him for making NewsFire slick as it is.

When asking him if Inquisitor will be free as of now FOREVER (and not just while in beta) he replied: ""...most importantly, Inquisitor 3 is now completely free." I don't think there's ambiguity there." Call me slow or whatever but I just wanted to be sure. Furthermore, when asked my he removed my comment, he wrote in the same email: "You tell me what the value is in posting something that is clearly answered in the original post. If you want your comment to be added to *my* blog, you need to contribute something of substantive value."

I wrote him the following: "The only thing that strikes me is that you, instead of chosing to answer exactly that, chose to just delete it without any notice. All the other "wonderful", "great", "how cool" posts are there. These of course do add much substantive value and the 20th "how great" does not state the obvious. I see. Talk about selective cognition. It's just about how your reaction feels like. It feels arrogant."

He then started to insult me with stuff like "Please, save the Dr. Phil routine for someone else. I'll live my life how I want, and you can do the same." Not exactly what you'd expect from a developer you paid serious money to. He lost me as a customer, that's for sure.

That's because he deletes all criticism no matter how slight. A quick search of "dave watanabe" on any Mac forum (or search engine for that matter) will turn up discontent at that man's theft and rudeness.

You're not paying for better quality in this case. It doesn't have a fraction of Azureus' features. If you want to pay money for libtransmission with Acquisition's skin then by all means. It might have the added bonus of phoning home!

I think some TUAW readers should take a step back and look at them selves. Why puke out all this hatred for a Mac developer who on other forums is rather popular. His apps may not be the most innovative or best engineered, but they are always beautiful and full of "Mac love".

After trying Xtorrent out I must say, I really love it. It makes torrenting so easy and so beautiful, just like it should be on a Mac. The only thing I miss is that he make it Apple Scriptable so I can write a "Add Engine to Xtorrent" script for Safari. Also it would be nice with Growl support.

If it taste good it cost good. If you want to save money and download one of the very gfood alternative OSS apps, that's fine. But Mac people in general isn¨t affraid to pay for better quality. Omniweb is a good example. "Who pays for a web browser?". Well I do because I want the most kick-ass web browser in this world!

Looking at the comments on his blog people seems happy:

On beta1:
http://www.newsfirerss.com/blog/?p=141#comments

On beta 2:
http://www.newsfirerss.com/blog/?p=148#comments

Not sure why anyone would want to use this, it's banned on alot of private trackers, you know the good ones people actually care about it. Plus the fact that the guy is a complete jerk, a friend of mine was reviewing some app of his called him Dave in the review and he emails him ranting and raving. Funny thing, he signs his blog as Dave.

Personally I'll keep using Azureus, it may not be the best looking app ever, but it gets the job done.

=Zuricher, yes, use Azureus.

To the people saying well Xtorrent does what the others don't - wrong, do more research. Xtorrent uses the same library as Transmission - libtransmission - which has huge announce interval problems and is therefore being banned by more and more private trackers. All DW has done, as usual, is take someone else's idea and wrap it up fancy - this will go the same way as Transmission in terms of usability and acceptance.

Adam, regarding your comment "News flash - Not all developers are the most likable people on the planet, some are hardly bearable. Doesn't mean they don't make good software, though." I agree, the problem is DW does neither, and screws the consumer into the bargain.

wiki - "Yes, but if he is able to get good rss support into this for auto downloading of rss feed based torrents, then it may get my money". Really? You'd *pay* for a BitTorrent client?