Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
uTorrent for Mac
Lots of the youngsters out there are clogging up the Internet tubes with their torrents and their Rock and Roll music. Sadly, the choice of BitTorrent clients (BitTorrent, in case you aren't familiar, is a distributed peer to peer downloading protocol. The more people who download something, the faster it is for everyone... in theory) on OS X has been missing a biggie: uTorrent. uTorrent is the most popular Bit Torrent client on Windows, and it was recently purchased by BitTorrent, Inc which is a mighty fine stamp of approval if you ask me. Sadly, it isn't available on the Mac. So very, very sad.Weep no longer, torrent obsessed Mac fiends! uTorrent is coming to OS X and according to TorrentFreak it is pretty slick. It is faster, smaller, and simpler than the other offerings on OS X and it is free. What's not to like? Ah, right, the fact that it is in closed beta at the moment.
Thanks, RM.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Squirrels said 10:22PM on 6-27-2007
Is this a bad time to point out that Transmissions is umpteen times faster, simpler, and more user friendly than anything ever on PC..including uTorrent?
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5cents said 10:28PM on 6-27-2007
Indeed, that is one tranny I can say I like.
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MATT! said 10:35PM on 6-27-2007
@ squirrels +1
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Jason said 10:39PM on 6-27-2007
I wouldn't say either is easier than the other in general use. uTorrent is great for Windows because it's small, sits in the the tray, and doesn't have to be installed. Oh, and what's fast? The speeds are great, depending on the seeds.
This is a welcome addition to Mac. It will be interesting to test it out alongside Transmission, which I agree is very nice (and no longer banned on certain servers?)
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David said 10:40PM on 6-27-2007
uTorrent is a billion times better than Transmission or any other client. Can't wait for this to be released on OS X.
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turkish said 10:44PM on 6-27-2007
I swear TUAW has something against Transmission. There is no way uTorrent will be simpler or smaller than Transmission, but TUAW doesn't even mention it. And a couple months ago they were kissing the ass of Xtorrent, when all it does is repackage the open-source transmission engine. Super lame-o TUAW.
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Nick said 11:05PM on 6-27-2007
To all the people who are trying to compare Transmission to uTorrent:
You need to go try uTorrent. You do realize how terribly lacking Transmission is, right?
No encryption
Reports stats badly
No DHT
No settings for the number of connections
No lazy bitfield support
No web interface
Auto-import won't work if you use it over a network
Maybe Transmission will be able to compete with uTorrent in a year or two, but right now, you must be kidding yourselves.
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JR said 11:09PM on 6-27-2007
I agree, this is a great addition to the Mac. People making general statements about transmission being better really need to check out uTorrent for windows (in the mean time).
The full fledged, highly configurable RSS feeds make uTorrent worth it. Heck, uTorrent is one of the reasons I run VMWare-server on my linux box, so I can setup autodownloads via RSS feeds in uTorrent.. Now I can do it on my mac, bonus!
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Tom said 6:53PM on 7-05-2007
"There is no way uTorrent will be simpler or smaller than Transmission"
See the "u" in "uTorrent"? It's actually a mu, which is the SI prefix "micro"... uTorrent is know for it's tiny size and blazing speed.
Whether or not BitTorrent, Inc will ruin it remains to be seen, but let's hope not.
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Elias said 11:25PM on 6-27-2007
uTorrent is one of the best pieces of software for Windows. It is so small yet so powerful.
I do love Transmission, and was glad they updated it not long ago and added some much-needed features.
Now one of the main things I wish Transmission would do that uTorrent does is to allow you to pick-and-choose which files you want to download from within a Torrent.
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JayC said 11:26PM on 6-27-2007
I use Tomato. how does this compare to the others? maybe I'll switch.
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avixe said 7:00AM on 6-28-2007
FWIW, nightlies of Transmission have supported selecting individual files out of a torrent for awhile now. Here's a link to a regularly updated development build (warning, may be buggy):
http://chucker.mystfans.com/opensource/transmission/Transmission-latest.dmg
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uros said 12:27AM on 6-28-2007
I use Azureus. It's powerful enough that I can forget about its un-Mac-like-ness.
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Mark S said 12:34AM on 6-28-2007
I tried uTorrent under Crossover and it seems pretty good. I may just trade in Xtorrent (my current torrent client of choice) for it. I've tried just about every Mac Bit Torrent client (Azureus, Transmission, Bit Torrent, and Tomato Torrent), and this is really the only missing one in my opinion.
Another good one that I would like to see come over natively is kTorrent. You can get it through Fink but you have to go through the hassle of using rsync and allow unstable packages. It's quite nice once you get through the hard work and has an excellent feature set (including built-in searches!).
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turkish said 4:48AM on 6-28-2007
BTW, no one in this thread said Transmission was better, we were all just pissed that as usual TUAW ignores it and acts like uTorrent is better in two regards that it is not. that's all. uTorrent is great and for many reasons might be a better client than Transmission, just not two of the reasons TUAW listed (app size and simplicity).
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tool4lyf said 1:02AM on 6-28-2007
µTorrent is undoubtedly the next best thing on Windows aside from FireFox.
I really do hope to see a better version of µTorrent on the Mac since many successful ports have been done from Windows to Mac. Since Mac is easier to do things, the transition should be easier and more of a benefit to Mac users.
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Pete said 11:07AM on 6-28-2007
Have fun guys. I wouldn't touch uTorrent with a ten foot pole.
BitTorrent Inc that owns uTorrent is in partnership with a major studio and the MPAA.
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Chris said 1:42AM on 6-28-2007
Finally, this is the only thing keeping the windows box under my deks since I switched a year ago, here's hoping it's not an intel only thing.
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Josh said 5:55AM on 6-28-2007
I use Azureus. I've tried all the other for Mac, but none seem to have as many features. Usually, I go the Apple direction and like feature-unful programs that are simple. But, with torrents I like to know Everything and I also like to have all those options. I will agree that uTorrent is awesome though. Everytime I teach someone on Windows about torrents I show them with uTorrent and its always very simple and easy. I just may switch if it turns out to give me enough features. Sadly, Azureus is UGLY.
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Darvin said 4:17AM on 6-28-2007
Nick:
No encryption - True.
Reports stats badly - WRONG. Transmission fixed this ages ago!
No DHT - WRONG. Had this for a long time.
No settings for the number of connections - WRONG.
No lazy bitfield support - no idea.
No web interface - Pfft.
Auto-import won't work if you use it over a network - Pfft.
Downloaded the latest beta.
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