uTorrent 1.8 Released, Mac Version Coming Soon
Written by Ernesto on August 10, 2008After months of hard work and more than six months since their previous stable release, the uTorrent team has released version 1.8 of their BitTorrent client, with significant improvements and updates. Adding to the excitement, we were told that a public Alpha of the Mac version will be released in the next few weeks.
uTorrent is the preferred client among many BitTorrent users. In December we reported that the number of uTorrent users worldwide had more than doubled in a year. At the time, 5.1% of all Windows PCs had the BitTorrent client installed, and this number has probably been growing further since then.
Users have had to wait a while for this new release, since the last stable uTorrent, version 1.7.7, was released back in January. A lot of work has been done in the meantime though, and the list of changes and additions that were implemented is “absolutely massive”, to quote Firon. One of the most significant updates in the latest version of uTorrent is that it comes with built in IPv6 support, which improves connectivity and thus performance. Other new features are better Windows Firewall registration on Vista and improved distribution of new connections across torrents.
The journey from 1.7.7 has been a long one, but now that 1.8 stable is out, the uTorrent team will dedicate more time developing the long awaited Mac version of the client. uTorrent developer Greg Hazel told TorrentFreak that they will be “more heavily focused” on the Mac version now, which they have worked on for more than a year already. The good news for Mac users is that Greg hinted that the first public Alpha version will be released in just a few weeks.
uTorrent was initially developed by Ludvig Strigeus, and the first public version of the application was released in September 2005. A year later, in December 2006, uTorrent was acquired by BitTorrent Inc., but it will remain separated from other projects that the company is involved in. As Ashwin Navin, President and Co-founder of BitTorrent Inc. told us last year: “utorrent.com and uTorrent community will exist indefinitely. It’s vibrant and growing, and we value the feedback provided in the forums a lot.”
uTorrent 1.8 can be downloaded from the uTorrent website, and the list of changes, improvements and additions is available in the forum thread announcing the release.
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87 Responses
Sounds cool. Can’t wait for the mac version to be released
Doesn’t show up on 1.7.7’s check for updates function yet
Taking your time will provide solid results and shows that they are thinking things through!
“One of the most significant updates in the latest version of uTorrent is that it comes with built in IPv6 support, which improves connectivity and thus performance.”
Errr, no, not unless you USE it, and a HUGE majority here don’t. In fact, I dare to say, unless you know you use IPv6, you don’t (since your ISP doesn’t provide it yet).
USE THIS NEW UPDATE TO DOWNLOAD THE NEW AUSTRIAN DEATH MACHINE, YOU’LL BE GLAD YOU DID. ONE EXTRA HOUR OF WORKING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ 4 – serenity
Well don’t go over the top mate, there’s a good reason people don’t use IPv6, if your on a home network there’s little point and even if you want to use it, how many standard routers include the ability for it?
well not even DD-WRT supports it so give it about 5 years and it might start to happen.
How exciting, one more crappy uT release that’s going to get banned and then ‘fixed’ within a few weeks. It’s kind of like having a car in and out of the shop 10 times over a year. I don’t know about you, but if I had a car that was broken that much of the time, I would probably stop using it altogether. And, if I was the mechanic responsible for the car upkeep, I sure wouldn’t be proud of my shoddy work.
BT Clients should have lemon laws.
They haven’t focused on the Mac version because they’ve been too busy fixing their mistakes on the Windows releases.
Instead of laying off only 20% of it’s company, Bittorrent, inc. should just fire the whole damn lot (including themselves). The ensuing void would probably produce a better BT client overnight and the quick death would be far less agonizing then this slow painful one.
Larry, Curly and Moe could write better code.
Been using the RC’s for a few weeks. 1.8 is awesome! :)
can’t wait for the mac alpha to come out
Their Mac utorrent client uses libtorrent, it’s not a port of utorrent from windows.
“How exciting, one more crappy uT release that’s going to get banned and then ‘fixed’ within a few weeks. It’s kind of like having a car in and out of the shop 10 times over a year. I don’t know about you, but if I had a car that was broken that much of the time, I would probably stop using it altogether. And, if I was the mechanic responsible for the car upkeep, I sure wouldn’t be proud of my shoddy work.”
IOH NOREZ, DEY GIV US STUFZ 4 FREE BUT I HATE DEM STILL12@!!!
@11 “Their Mac utorrent client uses libtorrent, it’s not a port of utorrent from windows.”
But libtorrent is GPL licenced, so isnt it illegal? Well, unless their Mac version will be opensource…
Well,
there are two projects named libtorrent, one is Rasterbar’s libtorrent (f.e. used in Deluge and BTG)
http://www.rasterbar.com/products/libtorrent/
and then there is Rakshasas libTorrent (used in rtorrent)
http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/wiki
As Rasterbars libtorrent is BSD-licensed they wouldn’t need to disclose the source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bsd_license#Proprietary_software_licenses_compatibility
while using libTorrent would oblige them to do so (GPL licensed).
@7
What was the last bittorrent program you coded???
@HelloWorld
The libtorrent dev works at bittorrent, inc. so he can license it to anyone.
Arvid Norberg indeed works at Bittorrent Inc.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/2/977/AB8
But even if he wouldn’t they could use it (BSD-license).
I’m not sure if there’s any difference between µTorrent and the official Bittorrent client, which I understand is µTorrent code with a different nametag slapped on.
If that’s the case, why go to the trouble of keeping two sets of duplicates of everything.
And if the Mac version of µTorrent is based on Libtorrent, how about a (official Bittorrent inc-approved) Windows version of Libtorrent?
Oh great they release uTorrent for Mac a week after I get a Seedbox.
i even use 1.7 on linux through wine :p
its a nice lil application
dMix:
I hope you don’t use OVH, ’cause there are rats on board:
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showpost.php?p=6346&postcount=92
Don’t you just love it when the Kangaroo Courts stick their noses where they dont belong?
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
the question when it finally comes out on Mac will be if it can stand to Transmission on the Mac
@4: If your only reason not to use IPv6 is that no one else does, then just use it. Otherwise how will the switch take place, if no one wants to use it because no one is using it?
transmission for mac is much better than utorrent, i think there just wasting there time.
@ enter8 How the hell do you know this release is going to be broken? Utorrent has generally been a very stable application so I have no idea wtf you are going on about.
I don’t know why, but none of my current torrent clients work on Snow Leopard.. either Snow Leopard is buggy or they are simply not compatible (if the latter please let UTorrent work).
Why are they bothering to make a mac port when there’s already Transmission?
enter8 is obviously a cranky Azureus developer. uTorrent has the best code out there. It’s tight and runs great. If you don’t like it, fine, there are lots of alternatives, but none as well constructed.
installed the latest version and installed the IPV6/Teredo.
My spyware program then tells me that I have AGENT TM spyware that is HIGH rated and should be removed.
This meant that IPV6/teredo was uninstalled.
???????????
god, i hate sycophants
Great release! Remember to install IPv6/Teredo in options/general, this speeds up things a little (especially if you are behind NAT).
I’ll stick to 1.6.1 but nice try.
Transmission is a bad client. If you like every update breaking something else (Talking to trackers just broke, before that it was verifying hashes so it never stopped downloading, before that it didn’t talk to the tracker properly, etc) and requiring a second and third update to fix it, Transmission’s the client for you. Otherwise you’re basically SOL on mac osx.
@wut?: SL is a prerelease dev build of OS X with a ton of new API’s (code changes). Things are going to break.
@24 – i think you are missing the point. most ISPs do not offer IPv6 support. he couldn’t use it if he wanted to.
@33
Enjoy your security hole filled version then.
I used the RC7 version of it and hated it mostly because it has that annoying RSS feeds bar going down the side of it. Azureus NoVuze ftw.
The biggest change is that the icon is now a square
“Why are they bothering to make a mac port when there’s already Transmission?”
Because choice is good?
Wheres the linux port?
enter8 clearly never developed complex software, and whoever says Transmission is “The One” bt client for OSX clearly doesn’t have TS issues within the ISP and also doesn’t use RSS for downloading automation; I installed crossover and uTorrent on OSX just because of both those issues, so stop complaining about the port ;)
#37: you can actually change the category view to fill up the entire width of the window (like it does on 1.7.7).
Just enable gui.tall_category_list in the Advanced options.
Also, about IPv6, the point of Teredo support is to provide IPv6 functionality for connections that are normally only IPv4.
#30: sounds to me like your spyware app is broken, considering all utorrent does is call some very standardized netsh commands to install IPv6 and teredo.
The new client limits your download speed to 10x your upload.
“37 Aug 10, 2008 at 19:07 by Cmcm
I used the RC7 version of it and hated it mostly because it has that annoying RSS feeds bar going down the side of it. Azureus NoVuze ftw.”
RTFM, you goip. F7 toggles that.
Enjoy your bloatware…
Mac version? ? THATS STUPID! why dont they make Linux version? because, linux programs work on Linux/Mac/freeBSD/OpenBSD/solaris/OpenSolaris..etc !! I thought that utorrent developers were smart enough to realize that !!!
The people arguing about IPv6. The point is they support it, one day it will be implemented, and everything needs to be ready. Its just like how you create a GigE network, you dont go replacing every switch and NIC at once, you do that shit gradually, and over time your entire network is Gigabite!
They are getting ready for the future, I love utorrent. Thank you for making such a good client.
Great program, recently switched over from BitComet (which sucks!) and won’t be switching for a while!
Vive uTorrent!
and it crashed 5 times in like 10 minutes. Must be the worst utorrent release so far, if not the worst BitTorrent-client released.
“Wheres the linux port?”
Hopefully soon, it would be good to check out.
Yeah lets focus on an inferior platform instead of focusing on the future for a serious platform,thats allways a good idea.*rolls*
1.8 feels very unstable here (crashed twice already – 1.7.7 never crashed once in all the time i’ve been using it). returned to 1.7.7 for now.
It’s mTorrent, actually. The Greek character is called “me” and is equivalent to an English “m” (the upper case symbol is identical in shape as well).
UM
if your going to use libtorrent then go with rtorrent good lord, its funny they are trying to go the rtorrent route, P.S. btw i got it to work with cygwin HAHA by changing the parsing in the make files.
and it out does even utorrent for the things it can do and speed.
I have written software- software that works right out of the gate. When I release (very infrequent) updates, it’s to introduce new features and clean up small bugs, not fix major issues that prevent the software from working properly.
The only company that releases crap and then tries to fix it as they go along is Microsoft. That’s not very good company.
I’ve been running 1.6.1 non stop for about a year and a half (with 700+ active torrents) and it’s never crashed once. That’s a program to be proud of- that’s the program that put uT on the map. If Sh*ttorrent, inc’s developers actually had some coding skills, Bram would never had to have bought uT. You can’t buy good coding and then hand it to crap coders and expect it to magically improve. It doesn’t work that way.
The clock is winding down. They can only rest on Ludde’s laurels for so long. Every release that comes out has more problems than the next. It’s time to move on.
Close, but no cigar.
The ancient Greek letter is ‘Mu’:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(letter)
– so if you don’t wanna say ‘utorrent’, say ‘mutorrent’ – but who really gives a toss. A rose by any other name, eh, eh? =]
As for 1.8 crashing, it’s prolly about time you did some housekeeping on your systems. It’s fine & dandy here…
I liked the Azureus, but its developers went mental, threw in a whole lot of commercial crap no one wanted and renamed it Vuze. I’ve been having performance problems (it often runs to 100% CPU – the developers don’t know why but give you a list of 30 things “to try”) and I’m wary of further updates since they’ll push their Vuze down your throat. The Vuze people also made it closed source after they took money from VCs. 2.5 is the last open source version.
So I went uTorrent. It boasts of having a much smaller memory footprint, but they cheat by setting their disk cache down so low it trashes. When you configure uTorrent, MANUALLY SET YOUR DISK CACHE OR YOU WILL GET PROBLEMS. I SET MINE TO 512MB FROM THEIR DEFAULT 32MB. Also there are no plugins WHICH REALLY SUCKS. Aside from that, it’s a nice client. Azureus can download faster though; I did a run off and found Azureus was nearly 60% faster – because uTorrent has no way to block cheating clients like BitComet. Aside from that, uTorrent isn’t bad so I hope 1.8 fixes those remaining problems.
Apologies for a useful post :)
Yes, this is what I’ve waiting for. Cheers to uTorrent.
Mac users stick to FrostWire.
http://www.frostwire.com
Not pwned by any of the cartels, and downloads at speeds over 1Mb/s on regular DSL/Cable connections
naaaah, never. 1.6 ftw !
/me agrees with #25. Used it for almost 2 years and have only had a problem with 1 bug. That is QUITE impressive considering that it is free software. Some people just set expectations at unattainable levels and complain when they aren’t met.
They probably never heard something called LINUX! Heeey! Are you there? LINUUUX!
Those of you sticking with 1.6, enjoy your security hole filled versions.
So when does the dead mans switch required by BitTorrent Inc. owners (the MPAA) kick in and phone everyone home (not that it doesn’t so that already for anyone using DHT [router.utorrent.com] ) …
@62: Sometime after our sun goes up and turns our planet into a dust cloud.
Vuze is still the best, but with IPv6 support, µTorrent made a big step forward.
i have recently downloaded utorrent 1.8 i like it, its got a nice new logo for one thing :)
and its really well written, as per usual, also, finally, its just as good as the previous 1.7.7, which in my opinion, is a mighty complement.
@53 – care to point us to some of this software that you’ve written?
Developers come across bugs all the time – when writing something as complicated as a BT client, and given the number of different operating systems, firewalls, anti-virus programs, network setups, ISPs, trackers and peers (who will each have different combinations of these) – not to mention the sheer combination of different program settings, it’s difficult to guarantee that a program will always behave properly in all those circumstances.
And funnily enough, the UT guys try to fix any crashes that get reported to them. If they could always reproduce it on their own machines, then they would fix it before releasing it. It works for most people, if it doesn’t work for you, that doesn’t mean that they are crappy coders, it means that something is different in your situation.
And does it necessarily make sense for BT Inc to write an entire client from scratch, when they could probably spend less money and effort by just buying an existing program and carrying on the work from there?
@55 – Azureus / Vuze is still open source, what you’re saying isn’t true. And just because you are having 100% CPU problems, doesn’t mean everyone else is. We give you a list of things to try, because fairly often, something else is actually causing the problem.
The updates don’t force you to use the Vuze interface. If you just want to use the old interface, you can just follow this guide:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/The_Azureus_Experience
@66
“care to point us to some of this software that you’ve written?”
And have some misguided Sh*ttorrent, Inc. fanboy attempt to DDoS my site? No thanks.
“And does it necessarily make sense for BT Inc to write an entire client from scratch, when they could probably spend less money and effort by just buying an existing program and carrying on the work from there?”
Ummm… you are familiar with the history of BT, correct? BT Inc wrote the first BT client. It did okay for a while basically because that was all there was. Because they couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag, though, Ludde came along and pwned them by writing uT. Rather than trying to compete with obviously superior software, they just bought the damn thing… and then proceeded to turn it to sh*t. That’s what they do. Sh*torrent, Inc.
History lesson over ;)
@68 – So no-one can verify your claims at all. The only thing I can really find is you asking a forum post asking if there’s any software which could generate a directory listing in HTML format (presuming that it is you):
http://snipurl.com/3eohs
Given that isn’t a particularly difficult thing to come up with manually – I’d have to say that based on this one small example, I wouldn’t really consider your programming skills to be that good. Feel free to point to other examples if you want.
> Ummm… you are familiar with the history of BT, correct?
I don’t need a history lesson thanks. Bram wrote it, he prototyped a usable client in Python because (amongst other things), Python is great for writing things quickly. He was writing this way before the formation of BT Inc – I remember the early versions of the client which used to popup a page to donate money to continue his work.
BitTornado spawned from that to make a lot more things customisable. A number of clients grew from that, using either the original BitTorrent or BitTornado as the backend – so you had clients like TorrentStorm that ran multiple instances of each client per torrent, and plugged into that.
Some clients were written from scratch, like Azureus. Ludde liked Azureus, but wanted something more lightweight, so proceeded to develop uTorrent.
Not all the people that were that at the beginning of the client’s development are still there – obviously Bram initially wrote it, and alus is primarily the one maintaining UT now.
All the later versions of the client were built from the initial Python implementation. It’s quite possible that regardless of the skill levels of any of the developers involved, the underlying core wasn’t suitable for their future plans.
So if they came to the conclusion that maybe it would need rewriting it, buying a stable client codebase to work from doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It doesn’t mean they’re incapable of writing a client as good as UT, it just means that it saves them a *lot* of time writing it from scratch again.
That seems like a better history lesson, rather than your “we were left to fend for ourselves, until SuperLudde came from the skies and saved us all” parable.
So quite frankly – I don’t believe the developers at BT inc are crap. And I don’t believe that UT is a crap client, and there seems to be a large number of users who agree. Your “Sh*tTorrent Inc” comments are just infantile.
@69: While your history is much more in-depth, it doesn’t change the fact that the *stable* 1.6.1 codebase has become very unstable since BT Inc bought it.
Why are you still advertising for uTorrent?
Ain’t utorrent been sold, like, years ago to Bittorrent.com which has been hand in hands with anti-p2p firms?
I’d rather like if you’d advertise for alternatives.
@70 – that’s a matter of opinion. I thought the 1.7 versions were quite popular – if they were so unstable, surely not so many people would use it?
Barnister – Unfortunatly for your claims, no-one has yet been able to do more than ‘claim’ at such a link. bluetack gives this claim lots of talk-time, but their only evidence is that utorent is owned by BT inc. who has some licensing deals with media companies, that hire anti-p2p firms.
By the same logic, I’m a member of the KKK, since my wife hired a plumber and the company the plumber works for has a guy working for them that is in the Klan. If any evidence 9and I mean actual facts) appeared that utorrent was working with anti-p2p companies, we’d shout it here, loud and proud.
I agree with #42
“The new client limits your download speed to 10x your upload.”
I increased upload speed on a torrent, and did find the download speed increased by x10. Is this what v1.8 does? If so, I am going back to 1.77.
“I liked the Azureus, but its developers went mental, threw in a whole lot of commercial crap no one wanted and renamed it Vuze.”
But it’s optional. Turning it off doesn’t even load it in to your RAM.
I don’t like the Vuze part either. The second they make it mandatory I will either use an old version or change clients, but since it is open source they can’t really make it mandatory so I’m not worried.
Until that happens, if it ever does, I am currently happy with Azureus but with Vuze turned off. It takes a lot of RAM but it has a lot of features, too.
“Ummm… you are familiar with the history of BT, correct? BT Inc wrote the first BT client. It did okay for a while basically because that was all there was. Because they couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag, though, Ludde came along and pwned them by writing uT. Rather than trying to compete with obviously superior software, they just bought the damn thing… and then proceeded to turn it to sh*t. That’s what they do. Sh*torrent, Inc.”
How did they make it shit? I haven’t used it since I used Windows, but I’m just wondering.
“The Vuze people also made it closed source after they took money from VCs. 2.5 is the last open source version.”
Really? I’ll have to check in to that, but I don’t think you’re right.
“They probably never heard something called LINUX! Heeey! Are you there? LINUUUX!”
Yea, that would be great. I’d like to try it out.
“@55 – Azureus / Vuze is still open source, what you’re saying isn’t true.”
Ok, good :)
“And just because you are having 100% CPU problems, doesn’t mean everyone else is.”
*raises hand* I’m not having that problem.
Why on Earth would you pronounce the “µ” as Mu, rather than “micro”? Not only does micro make more sense (considering the size of the program and its overhead), µ’s use as an SI unit is much more common.
Yeah, I say ‘microtorrent’ too.
Microtorrent FTW!
(see? =] )
@69
“Your “Sh*tTorrent Inc” comments are just infantile.”
If the shoe fits…
Even though your ‘no need to re-invent the wheel’ theory does seem plausible as to the reason why BT inc. purchased uT, it doesn’t change the fact that pre-acquisition, BT inc.’s client was pretty much a joke in the filesharing community and post acquisition, uT has been exceedingly problematic/unstable.
I am not alone in this opinion. An increase in market share is no indication of superior coding. It just means that most people don’t know any better. For those members of the filesharing community that are selective of the clients they use, they wouldn’t go near 1.8 with a ten foot pole.
1.6.1, plain and simple, is a work of art. I throw everything I can at it and I just can’t get the damn thing to crash. Ludde had to cope with the exact same complex environment that uT’s developers are dealing with now and yet his releases have been stable.
Ludde did ’save’ us all. Temporarily ;) Pre-uT windows clients were a wasteland. There’s a few glimpses of hope on the horizon (such as Halite), but they are still mostly garbage. Can you imagine running 700 torrents in Az for a year and half? It could never happen!
I wouldn’t go as far as to call him ‘SuperLudde,’ though. His coding/intellect is definitely ’super,’ but his morals may not be so lofty.
1.6.1 has remote crash exploits and other security holes.
If you find bugs and want them fixed, REPORT THEM. Don’t knee-jerk downgrade.
If you want to claim that uT actually reports what you’re downloading, PROVE IT. Provide Wireshark logs to back it up.
“1.6.1 has remote crash exploits and other security holes.”
PROVE IT.
So far, the only issues I’ve seen with 1.6.1 have been trivial compared to those of later releases. A remote user ‘might’ be able to make it crash, but I have yet to see proof of this. Even if this is true, how critical is it to have someone shut down your client? That’s like ringing someone’s doorbell and running away. There’s also the RSS cookie issue, which, although annoying, is hardly a ’security hole.’ Everything else is just unsubstantiated FUD spread mostly by a development team that doesn’t enjoy being made to look bad.
In other words, in the la la land that is the uTorrent forum, 1.6.1 is rife with horrors. In the real world, though, organizations with less of a self serving agenda embrace 1.6.1 as the secure and ultra stable client that it is.
“Can you imagine running 700 torrents in Az for a year and half? It could never happen!”
I can, as it happens. The content distribution network for all the content on Vuze uses Azureus clients to seed thousands of torrents – a fair amount of work has gone into that.
BT’s client, compared to others, wasn’t as good – I agree. What I disagree with is you basically saying that anyone who has worked for BT Inc is a bad coder – especially when you base it on a client that has evolved over time, and has had a number of different coders and maintainers, some who have and haven’t been directly involved with BT inc.
I don’t use uTorrent much – so I can’t really say whether things are better than worse. It has seemed to do the job regardless. I’m just not convinced that the unstability that you talk about is widespread as you make it to be.
There are a large number of users who stick to 1.6.1 because of the paranoia factor – so it’s difficult to say what percentage of those users stick to those versions because of that.
Anyway, wasn’t 1.6.1 the first BT inc related build? I thought some build between 1.6.0 and 1.6.1 was the last one ludde contributed to.
Looking at the announcements forum on the UT forums, there seem to have been a number of releases and bugfixes which have fixed various problems, including client crashes. Presumably that’s written by the same ludde who’s written this work of art you’re talking about?
And before you criticise those involved on the UT forums – I’m sure you realise that a number of those people are volunteers without being involved with BT inc. What’s their agenda? Or could they actually be genuine with what they’re saying?
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=29330
— 2008-01-25: Version 1.7.7 (build 8179)
- Fix: remote crash bug in WebUI
- Fix: (potential) remote crash bug with extension protocol (affects all 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8 builds released to date)
Come out of your tinfoil-hat wearing hole and provide proof of your claims. Report bugs if you think bugs are there. Give info to reproduce them. DO NOT stick with archaic versions. If you don’t report the bugs, they will NEVER get fixed.
One tidbit: 1.6.1 is post-BTInc-buyout.
@83
They didn’t code anything though, ludde was still doing the coding
this new 1.8 stable version is awesome!!! thanks for the good program, keep it coming
soooooooooo excited for the mac version. I’m not totally satisfied with transmission
MY ISP does provide IPv6 so this is fantastic!
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