Xtorrent Gets New UI, Selective Downloading
Written by Smaran on August 03, 2007The Mac BitTorrent client with the most beautiful UI, and the only shareware one in existence, Xtorrent, has received a significant update. New features, such as Selective Downloading, have been added and its UI has gotten sleeker (if that’s even possible).
Xtorrent, it seems, has come a long way since we last reviewed it after its 1.0 release. Since then, it has received quite a few updates, adding Leopard compatibility, UI tweaks, and more.
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:
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22 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Meh, why bother? Azureus works perfectly on the Mac. Certainly much better anyway… in my opinion, Azureus has always been the leader of customizability… so many options. uTorrent was close too, but I wouldn’t touch that anymore.
I don’t understand why people want to use xtorrent anyway… defeats the purpose.
If you want a NOOB client for Mac, just go with Transmission. Works fine, free, simple crappy interface. But for any real torrenting, Azureus FTW
Selective Downloading and File prioritisation?
What a coincidence?! Just after the open-source Transmission for mac released these new features in their daily builds a few months ago.
The guy developing this PAY software is stealing code.
I agree with you, Bob. But as most people would agree, Azureus is bloated (this has become even more true with the transition to Vuze or whatever they’re calling it now) and takes up way too much memory.
looks nice, but i dont use mac
Yay he can rip off Transmissions work and charge 30+$ for lifetime updates for something that should be free…….
Dave isn’t ripping off anything (Transmission is MIT) and when Xtorrent was announced on the transmission forums no one really objected. Xtorrent at this point is just being banned from Oink for being a pay for product. I don’t even use Oink anymore due to their administrators being dicks and would gladly sell my account if I could. I think Dave said it best:
Shit… in that case, OS X is just a pretty GUI for Unix/BSD that Apple happens to charge for. Oh dang.
I also don’t understand why people shoot xtorrent. It work well, the GUI is sleek, and I think P2P doesn’t mean anarchy. Work need to be paid. And I’m sure Oink administrator have an underground way to earn money from this (supports adds, or something hidden). So why Watanabe don’t have the right to earn money from his work ? Bob, do work for free ?
Just my 2cents
Janeiro, Watanabe has the right to charge for his work, but there are plenty of other people who don’t and the OiNK admins apparently side with this group.
Not everyone thinks that “work need to be paid”, that’s why we have uTorrent and Azureus and all the other wonderfully free BT clients out there.
Well,
another full-featured client (PE, Mainline-DHT, µTorrent-PX, IPFilter, Multi-Tracker, editable Tracker, etc.) for BT on OSX is Ktorrent. Plus it’s lightweight. But unfortunately it’s a PITA to install (best do it with fink, finkproject.org). And it doesn’t look that nice (KDE on XServer, but WebUI is available).
I recommend every geek to give it a shot.
xtorrent also allows disabling uploads….minimizing lawsuit risks. controversial yes…unethical, perhaps. but still…
azureus is heavy but much better on a mac.
On windows utorrent ofc.
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Xtorrent is a very nice application, but it needs to become free. I will certainly be purchasing it when I get a MacBook for my birthday though.
[quote comment="141865"]I also don’t understand why people shoot xtorrent. It work well, the GUI is sleek, and I think P2P doesn’t mean anarchy. Work need to be paid. And I’m sure Oink administrator have an underground way to earn money from this (supports adds, or something hidden). So why Watanabe don’t have the right to earn money from his work ? Bob, do work for free ?
Just my 2cents[/quote]
Actually, the file selection parts of the Transmission code is not MIT, but GPL. This was an intentional change. I wonder how Watanabe added this feature - he either wrote it himself, ’stole’ it from Transmission, or used another engine.
@jah
If the file selection is GPL doesn’t that mean that Wantanbe can use it without having to ask permission? Am I wrong in this assumption?
hi i enjoyed the read
David Watanabe, the developer, has now released Xtorrent 1.1 (beta). Here’s what’s NOT new:
He still expects you to pay for software that should be free. Oh, and its substandard software to boot.
Add the rest of the features and make it free, greedy asshole.
I don’t like it’s recent identification:
XTorrent [FAKE: "Azureus 2.5.0.4" / "Transmission 0.7-svn"]
That’s one way to gain market share… I’ll be adding it to the Azureus Stuffer plug-in list.
I feel that as soon as the mac beta of utorrent becomes public everyone mac will wonder what all the fuss was about. A lite app is a happy app and azureus is too fat me. You can have her. Soon Soon my prince will come, till then I will continue this little affair with transission I have going. We both know it’s just a fling till utorrent gets here……..ah with baited breath..I wait for yon uknight to arrive!! dally not long, my love in the forges of zeros and ones.. …
[quote comment="141733"]Meh, why bother? Azureus works perfectly on the Mac. Certainly much better anyway… in my opinion, Azureus has always been the leader of customizability… so many options. uTorrent was close too, but I wouldn’t touch that anymore.
I don’t understand why people want to use xtorrent anyway… defeats the purpose.
If you want a NOOB client for Mac, just go with Transmission. Works fine, free, simple crappy interface. But for any real torrenting, Azureus FTW[/quote]
Why would you not touch utorrent anymore? I gave Azureus a Spin, but it just hogs too much resources. I may have 2GB of ram, but its not fast ram by any means, and I generally use at least 1GB even during what I consider “light use” so, I’m big on resource management.
Yeah, I know, Time for an upgrade. My old Comp is about to have its 2nd Birthday :’)
Don’t nag my computer is about to have it’s 7th brithday and azureus runs fine on the background when i’m playing cs.
Ummm, so I was dumb enough to pay for xtorrent, because my downloads stopped working.
Yeah, they still don’t work.
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