In 2006, uTorrent was acquired by BitTorrent Inc., who continued to develop the application, and promised a Mac version.

The uTorrent for Mac projects started roughly two years ago. Initially it was based on libtorrent, but last year the development team decided to make the client a port of its Windows counterpart. A few months ago, an early Alpha release of the Mac version had leaked to the public, the official release, however, has some significant improvements and is much more mature.

The Mac release only runs on Leopard/Intel Macs at the moment, and is still in Beta. Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak that they are working on getting the bugs in PowerPC fixed as well as back-porting to Tiger. “We’re obviously really psyched that we finally got this beta out there. This is indeed a port of the Utorrent source on top of OSX,” Simon said.

“On Windows, uTorrent is by far the best Bittorrent client out there on a power:performance basis. Following on from uTorrent’s roots, we have continued to focus on only features that users really want, and we have avoided bloating up on lots of clutter. We’re now looking forward to bringing that specialness to the world of Mac-lovers,” Simon added.

uTorrent for Mac can be downloaded over here. Since it is still in Beta, the uTorrent team encourages early adopters to post bugs and annoyances in the uTorrent forums.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Some people are using TED, which is a Java app running continuously which may cause resource issues for the under-powered computer. Others might choose to use directly the RSS support built into torrent clients, explained in this previous article, or go for software such as Miro.

But for those of you out there who like to get a little more hands-on and aren’t afraid of a basic command line, read on.

TorrentFreak reader Lipflip has come up with an alternative method for OSX and probably Linux users too. He told us that everything TVShows did can be achieved by using some freely available tools like cron and a script pyTVShows that is based on the original TVShows application.

pyTVShows does the actual work by checking tvrss.net for torrents and downloading them if new ones are available. Lipflip has published a simple tutorial on how to setup the different components so that everything is working as expected. Although you don’t have to be an uber-geek to follow the tutorial, Lipflip notes that some basic command line skills are required which should help users to get their shows until the new TVShows is released.

The original TVShows application consists of two parts:

1. A front-end for fetching a list of shows and for subscribing/unsubscribing.
2. A python script in the back-end, that regularly asks tvrss.net if new episodes for the subscribed shows are available.

Luckily TVShows is an open source application, so after the development of TVShows stood still for several months, the back-end forked away as the separate pyTVShows project. We’ll use this to build a system that fetches your favorite television shows automatically.

The installation consists of a few easy steps. Python already ships with Leopard, so you don’t have to hassle around with fink or other ways to bring Python onto your computer.

1. Preparation

Open Terminal.App and create a bin/ directory under your home. You can use this directory to store small scripts or little unix-like applications.

$ mkdir /Users/YOU/bin

Download pyTVShows, unzip it, and put it as pytvshows-0.2 in your bin/ directory.

Download feedparser, unzip it, and install it.

$ cd /Users/YOU/Downloads/feedparser-4/
$ python setup.py install

2. Create a preliminary configuration file

pytvshows settings are stored in /.pytvshows.cfg. Create it and add one or two shows for testing.

$ nano ~/.pytvshows.cfg

The format of the configuration file is pretty simple. The name of the show is enclosed by squared brackets, followed by the last season/episode you have seen.
So the next episode downloaded for Favorite Show from the example below will be Season 1, Episode 2. Try episode = 0 for catching the first episode of a new season.

[Favorite Show]
episode = 1
season = 1

[Another Show]
episode =1
season = 4

See pytvshows’ documentation for further details.

3. Create a little wrapper script

Create a little wrapper script that calls the actual pytvshows, but hides any command line arguments you might want to use. Don’t forget to make it executable.

$ nano ~/bin/tvshows.sh
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/tvshows.sh

A typical tvshows.sh might look like this:

#!/bin/bash
echo -n “tvshows.sh – “; date # log current date & time (cron.log)
/Users/YOU/bin/pytvshows-0.2/pytvshows –output_dir=/Users/YOU/Downloads/

This will call pytvshows and tell it to download new .torrents into Leopard’s Downloads folder. This folder is usually represented as a stack in your dock. You might consider configuring your favorite BitTorrent client to watch this folder for new .torrent files.

Check it for typos by executing the script:

$ ./bin/tvshows.sh

It should download unseen episodes of the shows configured in ./pytvshows.cfg.
If it doesn’t try running pytvshows with the parameter --verbose. The configuration file will be rewritten each time a .torrent was downloaded. So maybe it doesn’t download new episodes because it thinks it already did.

4. Run tvshows.sh periodically

Unix-like systems usually come with a time-based scheduling service called cron. It is driven by rather cryptic looking configuration files called crontabs. In this case we’ll tell cron to run our newly created tvshows.sh twice an hour.

Edit your crontab:

$ crontab -e

If you’re thrown into vi you may try export EDITOR=nano beforehand.

Your crontab should look like this:

# run twice an hour
12,42 * * * * /Users/YOU/bin/tvshows.sh >> $HOME/bin/cron.log 2>&1

This tells cron to call tvshows.sh on 12 resp. 42 minutes past the hour. All output (STDERR and STDOUT) should be send to /Users/YOU/bin/cron.log.
Take a look at man crontab for further information.

It’s strongly suggested to randomize the numbers above. Otherwise too many pytvshows might be querying tvrss.net simultaneously.

5. You’re probably done

Check your configuration by looking at ~/bin/cron.log.

Have fun!

Lipflip’s blog can be found here

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

David Watanabe, the developer, has now released Xtorrent 1.1 (beta). Here’s what’s new:

Interface changes
Xtorrent has gotten what the developer calls a “newly refreshed user interface”. New, sleeker-looking toolbar buttons that resemble those in the Leopard Finder, including a number of other interface tweaks have been added.

Selective Downloading
What was one of the most requested features, followed by encryption, is the ability to pick and choose which files you want to download from inside a torrent. Xtorrent finally lets you do this. Up until recently, Azureus was the only Mac BitTorrent client that could do this. Transmission added the feature a few weeks ago.

File Prioritisation
You can now tell Xtorrent which files in a torrent you want to give more priority to and have downloaded first. This was another oft-requested feature, according to Watanabe.

Xtorrent is quickly becoming the uTorrent of the Macintosh. Not uTorrent Mac, which we gave you a preview of, but the Mac equiavalent of uTorrent Windows. It’s light, has many important features and has a pretty UI. The only difference is that Xtorrent is shareware and uTorrent is not. But it’s widely known that the Mac community is a lot more open to shareware than most Windows users.

Unfortunately, Xtorrent still has its drawbacks. Its intrusive shareware policy is still very much there, rearing its ugly head at people without licenses. And some popular private trackers explicitly ban Xtorrent from connecting to torrents and downloading them. OiNK, possibly the most exclusive private BitTorrent site, whose invites are highly sought after, and till they banned the practise, were auctioned off on eBay for ridiculous amounts of dough, has banned Xtorrent. Here’s the message OiNK users who try to download with Xtorrent get:

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Announced by Steve Jobs in his keynote at WWDC ‘07, Leopard is the fifth iteration of the Unix-based operating system. It is the “feature-complete” release and is not expected to change much before it goes on sale in October of this year. New features include, among others, a new version of the Finder, the Mac file manager, a new unified interface, Time Machine, a backup application heavy on eye-candy, and Spaces, an integrated virtual desktops implementation.

Creative Commons picture by M. Caimary.

The developer preview was handed out to attendees of the Apple developer conference almost two weeks ago. Normally, one would start to see torrents for such a thing appear hours, if not minutes, after it is handed out. It seems Apple developers aren’t as quick on the uptake as our Windows-using friends. The Vista RTM (Release to Manufacturing) was uploaded even before news sites had the chance to write about Microsoft pushing out its first non-beta release of Windows Vista.

Titled “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard 9A466 WWDC ‘07″ or “The New Big Cat”, Mac OS 10.5 can be found on almost every torrent site on the web. But before our Mac-using friends rush to download a copy for themselves, it’s best we mention that this is beta software, and even if no new features are going to be added to it, the OS is reportedly buggy and requires work. We recommend you hold out till its release in October and buy yourself a copy. It’s cheap.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Grooveshark’s business model is somewhat like the reward system that everyone thought Apple might implement with iTunes, if they integrated BitTorrent in Leopard, and the iTunes Store. Users buy and download songs & movies over BitTorrent from the iTunes Store and get free iTunes gift cards or points for uploading.

To me, this sounds like a “better” iTunes, especially if the songs are not infected with any kind of DRM, which Grooveshark says they will not. But will it be enough to convert all the people who share songs over “illegal” P2P networks like Gnutella? Maybe not, but I believe if users are given a sensible and competitive legal alternative, a decent amount will switch. And Grooveshark seems competitive on paper.

When it comes to the crunch, many services just fail to deliver. Remember Spiral Frog, anyone? What ever happened to it? It succeeded in getting not only the blogosphere and social news sites all excited about it, but also mainstream news agencies like the BBC. It was going to irradicate illegal music swapping. Then it was found out that the songs were going to be laden with Windows DRM and force users to keep going back to the website and watching ads to stop their songs from locking up. All hope of it becoming successful died then and there. Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen with Grooveshark.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Apparently Apple’s headquarters was not pleased with these pirates. After being confronted with the rumors, the alleged pirates readily admitted that they had breached the non-disclosure agreement.

However, this honesty was not appreciated by Apple. One of the fired employees told to Think Secret:

“All of us know that we violated our NDA and ethics policy. Therefore, because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated. My only question is, if we all lied and denied it would we still be working at Apple today? Even more so, is that the kind of person that Apple wants working for them?”

The full version of Leopard OSX is due in spring 2007.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

According to an article in Variety Apple CEO Steve Jobs wants the movies to be $9.99, but the Studio’s are giving him a hard time:

Studios have resisted Jobs’ initial insistence that feature films be priced at the easy-to-remember $9.99. After all, library titles are typically sold to Wal-Mart and Best Buy significantly cheaper than new releases. Studios now are trying to convince Apple to sell similar content at multiple price points, something the company has never done.

the article continues:

Also complicating the deals: The studios are working out terms with a host of other distributors, including Amazon, Movielink and BitTorrent, in part to make sure that one company does not dominate. It seems that none of the studios wants to be first in making a deal with Apple. Disney would be the logical leader, but even they are cautious, fearing it will look like in-house synergy rather than a business decision.

And the rumors go on, there are “insiders” suggesting that the movie store wil be “BitTorrent powered, and that people can earn credits if they share bandwidth. This could go through the torrent client that will be included in OS X 10.5 “Leopard”.

Last month it was announced that BitTorrent users could save for free goodies from the Itunes store, if they help to distribute software updates.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It’s a perfect example how both companies and users can benefit from BitTorrent. You will donate a little bandwidth and the companies will save money. The losers are of course the ISP’s, who will restrict bandwith even more.

According to some of our oldest and most reliable sources within Apple’s software development sector, Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” will include a system-level “BitTorrent” filesharing client that can be user-customized to ‘donate’ upstream Internet bandwidth for things like pushing Software Update packages to Leopard users, delivering iTunes Store content, and just about any purpose to which Apple puts its bandwidth.

read more on Macosrumors

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.