UTorrent Beta for Mac

By Jim on November 30th, 2008

I haven’t tried it yet as I too am a Transmission user. Transmission just gets my downloading done well enough that I’m not sure uTorrent would add enough value for me to switch.

The Apple Blog has some good feedback after using the uTorrent beta for a while:

I still prefer Transmission overall, and that’s what I use on my Mac machines. I love them both, for similar reasons, but luckily I’ve never had to choose between the two, since they weren’t available on the same platform. Until now. µTorrent Mac Beta has been released and is shattering my carefully divided reality.

I had to fight a little reluctance, and remove my Transmission icon from my dock so it wouldn’t see my betrayal, but I managed to download and install the new beta. I have to admit, µTorrent’s icon is very appealing. Score one for the newcomer. It also opened very quickly, revealing a minimal, Mac-friendly, attractive user interface. So this is what temptation feels like.

With the proper ports forwarded in my firewall, and running one after the other, not simultaneously, I found download speeds to be roughly the same in both applications on my test file, a (legally) free audio book of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Both feature individual file prioritization, speed limits, peer information, and ratio monitoring and automatic stopping of seeding at customizable ratios. After I performed my brief test, I had to ask myself: would µTorrent unseat Transmission as my go-to torrent client?

uTorrent for Mac Beta