µTorrent Mac alpha leaked

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 25th September 2008
Comments (3) Stumble
The µTorrent for Mac leaked alpha works pretty well by all accounts - just don't bother trying to use the search function.

The µTorrent for Mac leaked alpha works pretty well by all accounts - just don't bother trying to use the search function.

If you're a Mac fan wanting to get his fill of perfectly-legitimate-honest BitTorrent goodness, there's some good news: you're getting the popular µTorrent application. The even better news is you can try it right now – sort of.

According to The Cult of Mac, the teeny-tiny BitTorrent engine is currently being coded for Mac OS X, and a private alpha copy has – not without irony – been leaked onto notorious BitTorrent-based file sharing site The Pirate Bay.

According to Simon Morris, the vice president of product management at µTorrent's owner BitTorrent, the code leaked onto the 'net represents “an internal development build of µTorrent for Mac” of 'alpha' quality, and was not intentionally released by the company. Morris goes on to state that BiTorrent “would strongly recommend folks not to use it as it isn't yet complete or stable enough to be released to the public.”

Despite the warnings, users are queuing up to try the sneak-peak release – even though you already need a working BitTorrent client in order to download it. Early reports reveal that the client is largely functional, working just as well as its Windows version with a single exception: the in-built search functionality is somewhat broken.

Whether the Mac client comes too late to give BitTorrent – the company, not the protocol – much headroom in an environment which already has the non-too-shabby Transmission client available remains to be seen. I hope for the sake of the effort the company appears to have gone to that it hasn't missed the boat.

Any Mac users going to be giving µTorrent a try in either leaked alpha or final release form, or are there better clients out there than a port of a Windows application? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Quote Jamie 25th September 2008, 09:30
Transmission is an excellent piece of software, uTorrent will have their work cutout trying to eat into that install base.
Quote Firehed 25th September 2008, 10:35
Dunno why µTorrent is always so hyped - the interface is clumsy as hell on Windows (like all of the other torrent clients) and the speeds are the same. They attempted to take Transmission's nice appearance and then added in a bunch of crap that you don't need and cluttered things up. Unless it's significantly faster, I'll give it a miss.

The search is almost pointless IMO. No torrent site have an API to make a client-based search actually useful (they want those ad dollars, after all), the iframe-style approach is... meh, and if you've got so many things downloading that you need to search in them rather than just scroll through a list, you're probably overdue for a nasty letter from your ISP ;) Xtorrent makes a valiant attempt, but I still find its approach rather clumsy, and there are a number of political issues within the Mac community with regard to it's developer (not to mention that most people have no intention to pay for a torrent client of all things).
Quote iwod 25th September 2008, 11:24
Finally the much awaited BT Client for Mac.
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