Filed under: Software, Freeware, Software Update
Transmission shifts into 1st gear
Transmission, long available in beta form, is one of my favorite torrent clients. BitTorrent, as you probably know, is a way to transfer or share files over the internet, for free, using a 'swarm' model to speed files along. Transmission makes the downloading of those files quite stunning, with its simplicity and ease of use. Transmission's beautiful user interface goes nicely with Leopard, as it has been redesigned; not to mention, it's 100% Leopard compatible. Some of the new updates in version 1.0 include: - Group labeling, filtering, and sorting
- Leopard: Time Machine will ignore incomplete downloads
- Display remaining time for seeding transfers
- Ability to set global and per-torrent number of connections
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
miyamotofreak said 11:57PM on 1-04-2008
Oh, I remember when OS X didn't have anything that could even hold a candle to uTorrent. Not too long ago (Transmission was 0.5 and slowly developed). Now they've burned through releases like crazy and this may be the best client on any platform period. Congrats, Transmission team, congrats.
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XGM said 12:05AM on 1-05-2008
The day it came out stable, i was happy to be free from using my other PC with uTorrent since Azureus is... well...
Good release, and especially the incomplete download feature for Time Machine.
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Rhywun said 12:14AM on 1-05-2008
Very nice. This cements Transmission's position as the torrent client of choice on the Mac. My only quibble is the all-black chiclet icons that seem to be taking over Leopard. Otherwise... fantastic.
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Solar said 12:13PM on 1-05-2008
Agreed. The new toolbar looks horrible and the buttons aren't distinctive enough sans color and large shapes.
Rhywun said 11:20PM on 1-05-2008
I know why they're doing it though. It's because the background is so dark now. And the chiclets are nice and light. But I still think they could put some color in there (not just the Transmission folks, but everyone who's using the new chiclet buttons).
Gimp said 12:15AM on 1-05-2008
http://digg.com/software/Transmission_1_00_Released
Please digg!
And thanks from the developers for the post about transmission! :D
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Rae said 12:24AM on 1-05-2008
omg i love this program, ive been using bitrocket but damn....transmission totally blows that away
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Andre Diar-Bekirian said 12:28AM on 1-05-2008
oh wow, new design as well? Good work, this is my favorite torrent client for sure. Simple in design and very effective. Just like the mac itself.
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Ed said 12:43AM on 1-05-2008
Sweet, especially since I just started using time machine tonight.
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d00by said 2:02AM on 1-05-2008
As far as I know Transmission does not have a ipfiletr plugin similar to that present in Azureus (safepeer).
Peergaurdian does not play nice on Leopard.
As long as transmission does not provide ipfilter plugin, it is useless for me.
Azureus is the best option if one wants to remain safe from the anti-p2p nutters while bit-torrenting. ;)
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hessi said 3:16AM on 1-05-2008
I really would love to like Transmission, but after several months of using it, I changed back to Azureus.
While Transmission connects to 20-30 of 50 available sources and needs 12-15 hours for e.g. a 200MB file, Azureus connects to 500 of 2000 sources and downloads the same file in 30 minutes.
Stuff like the incredible stupid 0.95 release is just the cherry on the cake.
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Simon Arch said 3:46AM on 1-05-2008
That seems like it'd be the site and the particular torrent rather than the application. I've had plenty of times when Azureus wouldn't connect and took forever to download a well-seeded torrent, and when Transmission quickly downloaded a poorly-seeded torrent. And vice versa.
Simon Arch said 3:52AM on 1-05-2008
And dude, any well-seeded torrent with 5000 peers is going to download more quickly than one with one tenth that. It's all about the seeds.
Marc said 3:50AM on 1-05-2008
Transmission is NOT FULLY leopard compatible. The bug in where you double click a torrent in the window and it doesn't pop the inspector is STILL present. It is very annoying to have to cmd+i or click the inspector buttons.
The constant barrage of untested shitty releases x.9.x has lead to Transmission being banned AGAIN in private trackers.
The new look is horrible and confusing. The inspectors buttons graphics are much worse than text. The removal of text below default is a bad move. People dont know what those icons mean. But luckily OS X allows us to change that.
Other than that, Azureus, Utorrent Bittornado, completely blow away transmission in connecting to peers, for downloading and seeding. My ratio really suffers with Transmission.
There is also no DHT support which is VERY important since a lot of torrents have dead trackers.
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airwaves said 5:50AM on 1-05-2008
Text under buttons is ugly and it takes a second to learn what each button does. Not hard!
Oh I agree about the connecting to peers. Dead trackers = dead torrent in transmission. I loaded torrent in transmission and nothing was happening. Tracker was dead sadly. Open it in Azureus, connected to a number of peers and download done in a matter of time.
James Madley said 6:11AM on 1-05-2008
First point doesn't bother me because I never close the Inspector window.
Second point makes no sense to me because every 0.9 release worked fine for me and I've never hit an open torrent that refused me. I don't believe in signing up just to get something I can get elsewhere.
Third point definitely makes no sense because they're based on icons seen almost everywhere. I'll admit the Create Torrent File button is not obvious at first but the Open Torrent File is a picture of a folder, like in Smultron for example.
The Remove Torrent File button looks like the Delete button in Mail.app.
The Pause All button has a "pause" symbol.
The Resume All button has a "refresh" symbol like the one in Safari.
The Filter Bar button looks like a magnifying glass like Spotlight. The name may be just a little misleading but the image is not.
And what about the "i" for Information? The UI element may be called an Inspector but don't they provide the same thing?
Snail? Speed limiting maybe?
Moving into the Inspector itself, the first is an "i" for information, the second is the OS X network icon, the third is a picture of people, the fourth is the common symbol for a file, and the last is a cog which you can see in such apps as Demeter for Advanced Options.
Fourth point, well it really depends on where you are and what you are using. Transmission gives me just as many peers as my mate and yet all he gets is 3kBps using µTorrent. I get 20kBps off the same file. Azureus? No thanks. Not only is it slow internet wise, it has a slow UI. Can't speak for BitTornado because I've never used it and why bother?
And finally, the fifth point, who cares? There are usually more than one of the same file under many different trackers. I occasionally run into the odd Demonoid torrent but I soon find elsewhere. All it takes is a little knowledge of how to use Google.
Rhywun said 11:37PM on 1-05-2008
I happen to agree that the Inspector window should show text rather than icons, if only because it's more standard to do so. But clearly they did it to make it more compact. And I agree that double-clicking should bring up the Inspector window although I wouldn't call it a "bug" that it doesn't.
Chris Brummel said 4:01AM on 1-05-2008
HUZZZAAH! WebUI that isn't Azureus! Now I can torrent from the iPhone in the McDonald's bathroom!
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Anthony said 5:58AM on 1-05-2008
Just don't tap your foot, you have been warned.
Rae said 11:19AM on 1-05-2008
lol awesome comment