Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone
iPhone gets native P2P torrent software
Your iPhone plays audio. Your iPhone plays video. Until now, you had to sync those suckers. Today, the insanely brilliant iPhone Hacker core announced a preliminary version of a Transmission Peer-to-Peer client for iPhone. The code is ported from the Transmission site to run on the iPhone's ARM microprocessor. Tests on downloaded files produced the identical MD5 checksum as downloading via wget.
Now before you start torrenting, there are some important matters you need to know. First: P2P + EDGE do not mix. Let me repeat that for emphasis. They DO. NOT. MIX. That's because EDGE + P2P takes down EDGE faster than toppling a Jenga pile. Update Further testing has gotten 5kb/s over EDGE without crashing but it's an iffy proposition. Use with care.
Second, we are posting this because there are many *legal* torrents, including music and video, available for download. So please don't start getting into a "Torrent Good"/"Torrent Bad" flamewar in the comments.
Third, this is EXTREMELY preliminary software. It will develop over time -- so you probably don't want to grab a copy and start torrenting right away until it becomes more stable.
Fourth, this is a command-line client. As it matures, someone is going to slap a GUI on that baby but at this time, do not look for the software to show up in Installer.app or Cydia.
Finally, be aware that torrenting will wear down your battery faster than, um... toppling a Jenga pile. (C'mon folks. We're really short on family-friendly metaphors here. Suggest your own in the comments.)
Way to go core!
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Kyle Kirby said 11:51PM on 3-02-2008
Azureus can do this... Get the Web UI Plugin for it.
core said 7:24PM on 3-02-2008
@ Collin - yes you are 100% spot on there mate! Control would be better than direct download. We just added transmission-{daemon,remote,proxy} to the post over here at http://wickedpsyched.com/iphone/torrent
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MacSlut said 7:48PM on 3-02-2008
I don't get all the "this is lame, who would want it" comments. I produce audio and video content that is available for legal downloads via Bittorrent. The content we produce is iPhone/iPod compatible.
With a bittorrent client running natively on the iPhone, you could be anywhere there's wifi and download our shows for later viewing.
So for example, before going to bed at a hotel, you could set up your iPhone to download a bunch of torrents over the free wifi. The next morning, you could have a couple of hours worth of shows to watch on the plane.
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Tipper said 9:02PM on 3-02-2008
isnt 3G iPhone in the works, how much faster is that than EDGE?
Dogzilla said 8:11PM on 3-02-2008
I certainly don't fall into the "Who would want this?" camp - I've used computers and developed software for long enough that I realize that it's impossible to predict all potential uses for a device, be it software or hardware. After all, that kind of liberation is the point behind computers in the first place.
However, I *really* hope the developer does the right thing and codes this to only run if the iPhone is on WiFi. Contrary to what others may wishfully believe, EDGE (and I believe all cellular networks) are limited in the amount of bandwidth available. Having some tool deciding that he/she needs to download the latest Desperate Housewives while walking around the city would definitely impact other users. If this software gains wide acceptance, I can easily envision AT&T and other carriers entering into the same games that Comcast is now trying, and for much the same reasons.
I honestly couldn't care less what you do with your bandwidth. But when/if it impacts *my* bandwidth, you're damn right I care.
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Chris McQueen said 8:12PM on 3-02-2008
Sweet, torrents... that's cool.
Has anyone figured out copy and paste for this thing yet?
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Andrew Rush said 10:37PM on 3-02-2008
haha good point!
I don't really know how writing programs for the iPhone works, but I assume that it would be pretty hard to create an implementation that would work system wide. Maybe 'press and hold' one finger for insert curser mode, and 'press and hold' two fingers to bring up a context menu or something, with choices to highlight and copy/paste?
I use two fingers on my PowerBook to right click, so it's not so far out there.
Peter H said 8:17PM on 3-02-2008
"be aware that torrenting will wear down your battery faster than"..
faster than steve jobs releases the iphone sdk kit
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Chris said 8:18PM on 3-02-2008
utorrent webui support for iphone safari please!
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Michael said 8:29PM on 3-02-2008
SICK - love this.
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dmesh said 9:25PM on 3-02-2008
but why the most hated torrent app on the web. Transmission has been banned from all the good torrent sites. Maybe they should fix the problems first then worry about migrating to another platform. C'mon utorrent get a mac version happening soon.
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Andrew Rush said 10:42PM on 3-02-2008
Banned? I'm assuming you mean private trackers or something. I use Transmission and love it! There was a rocky point last year when every update caused some new problem, but currently it's working great, and has been for a while!
livings124 said 9:50AM on 3-03-2008
This is not true. It is allowed at all the private (and public) torrent sites.
dustin said 10:34PM on 3-02-2008
if they find a way to torrent on the itouch i'd buy it in a heartbeat
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Bon said 10:54PM on 3-02-2008
Maybe it's just me but is anyone else wondering why all the developers have overlooked a seemingly simple flash plugin for Safari on the iPhone and maybe a bit less simple, yet extremely important, bluetooth file transfer?
These, in my opinion, should have been top priority on any developer's list :\
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Mario Burkhardt said 5:03AM on 3-03-2008
you want flash? and you want a third party developer/hacker to write the code so that flash will work on your iphone?
Well maybe you guys that demand copy and past apps have a wrong understanding of how apps work and what they can do. There is a very limited set of frameworks that you can access as a developer to get input from the camera, find contacts, and so on, but to implement flash or copypaste would mean that the hackers would need to alter the whole firmware version, and so far that has always been apple's job.
Jon Brown said 8:50PM on 3-03-2008
Nicely said Mario :) Sorry I was such a ass the other day.
Regi said 11:36PM on 3-02-2008
Uau, nice!
I compose musics, and I'll put my music for free p2p in this app.
Very cool, and helpful for "not yet" famous singers and composers.
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Macopoulos said 1:21AM on 3-03-2008
Is it bossible to run rtorrent, get it from cydia or something?
rtorrent the clie based libtorrent client?
I'm asking cause i already have it compiled for my linksys nslu2 running of natively debian etch and it's processor is arm, so it may work if it gets compiled with the apple-darwin-iphone gcc and other libs?
Thanx
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Michael said 3:20AM on 3-03-2008
...for those who say why have this
Imagine itunes store worked on edge and was free. Thats what this program could become. Think of any song, search by singer/band, have it download to you iphone and play away.
The only limit is bamdwidth and in a few years on 5g or whatever we will no longer worry about it. For wifi this could be implimented immediately.
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