Xtorrent public beta 1 reviewed
Written by Smaran on September 18, 2006The much hyped Mac BitTorrent client from my friend David Watanabe is now available for download. We first covered it a week ago when it was announced. Even though it’s still in testing, we’ve decided to do a review of it.
The main feature that sets Xtorrent apart from its Mac brethren is the ability to search from within the application. BitRocket, also still in beta, is the only other Mac BT client to offer this feature. There are only two search engines included by default, Google and Yahoo!, but you can easily add more in the preferences pane. I added the site bt.etree.org (legal live recordings) without any problems. All you have to do is go to a BT site, search for something, and then copy the URL you see in the address bar into Xtorrent. For example, I searched for “grateful dead” on bt.etree.org. This is the URL I got: http://bt.etree.org/?search=grateful+dead&cat=0. Just replace grateful+dead with %@ and you’re done!
Another feature unique to Xtorrent is Autodownload. Suppose you have a folder full of .torrents, you can have Xtorrent monitor it and download them all. I have Autodownload monitoring my Desktop. Since that’s my where all my files from Safari are downloaded to, Xtorrent automatically adds them and clears up my Desktop!
The user-interface is beautiful, just like that of Acquisition, David’s P2P application. Other than the UI, there are some other similarities to Acquisition as well. For one, the “Download” and “iTunes” preference panes looks exactly the same. You can have Xtorrent automatically import any video and audio files you download directly into iTunes. This is one feature all of us Acquisition users are already accustomed to and love.
Xtorrent is in its first beta, so don’t fret about any bugs you may come across, instead report them and help get Xtorrent ready for the prime time. The fact is, this hardly seems like beta software. Everything is polished and works well. You can’t expect any less from one of the most talented developers on the Mac platform. Newsfire, Inquisitor, Acquisition, and now Xtorrent is all the proof anyone needs.
Overall, Xtorrent is just a pleasure to use. Everything “just works.”
Stay tuned for an interview with David Watanabe, the developer of Xtorrent.
Previously: uTorrent WebUI now Public
Next: Snarf-it Disappeared, Servers Seized?
24 Responses
look at the license, it uses transmission as the core. that means it will inherit the same bugs and probably never get any decent features. who cares about how it looks if it doesn’t work right. i tried it out and found it very disappointing. it concentrates wholly on the search interface.
Here we go again, yet another “new” BT client for Mac. When is someone going to go for content over style? I just can’t get excited by this anymore: Transmission is banned by most of the trackers I use, Bitrocket has a shady past to put it nicely, and now I would have to pay cash for Xtorrent. It would really have to be something special before that happens.
Unbelievably, Azureues is still the only viable alternative for me, and that hurts, let me tell you.
And as for reviewing a product developed by a friend, what’s that all about? Thanks for the objective critical analysis – not.
Come on guys, you can surely all do better than this.
XTorrent is effectively a new GUI for libtransmission, with a search interface. Autodownload is not an ‘exclusive’ feature, Transmission already has it in the SVN version.
Quote from TFA:
Another feature unique to Xtorrent is Autodownload.
This isn’t unique to Xtorrent… Azureus has supported this for as long as I’ve been using it. Go into your preferences, go under Files, and then into Torrents. You’ll see it listed right there, “Import new .torrents automaticall” and you can choose the dir and intervals that you want Azureus to scan that folder…
Always love reading these wonderful “un-baised” objective articles… Eh, I think I’ll stick with Azureus tyvm…
I can’t believe how inaccurate this article is. This is just Transmission with a new interface. Not only that, it shares the same bugs as Transmission meaning you can’t use it at the big trackers. This is garbage. Can you say that with me? G-A-R-B-A-G-E. Just because it looks pretty doesn’t mean it works.
This is transmission with a fun interface.I will not pay for that.
No offense, but with Transmission and Bitrocket out there, I don’t see why anyone would want to spend Money on an application that’s… well, equal to its free competitors.
Transmission has had the “unique Autodownload feature” for ages in the SVN. Check the “Watch Folder for Torrents:” box, choose Desktop from the Dropdown menu and tick the other boxes to make sure that the torrents don’t stay there.
To the Author of xtorrent: Good luck with selling your application, you’ll need it. If it was Freeware, well, I’d give it a shot. But paying for Shareware when there’s Transmission, Bitrocket and Azureus available? No thanks.
What’s this about transmission not Doing The Right Thing? I use Transmission and seem to get on fine… what’s it doing wrong, and what’s the future (svn?) look like?
Are you insane? Azaureus and uTorrent can both do this and I assume that BitComet and the rest can as well, although I haven’t used them.
I looks nice, but I’ll stick with Bits on Wheels until David combines it with aquisition…
I’ve been searching for a long time for a program that will allow me to do something different, like have a nice plugin architecture, something like that. I tried this program this morning, and I hated it. It’s main “feature” is string replacement! This review reads like the reviewer has little to no experience with any other torrent ever.
Great apps, it looks simular to bitrocket but the live seach is awesomer.
@anonymoose: That was in reference to _Mac_ clients. And sadly I’ve never heard of “Azaureus.” :-)
[quote comment="12676"]@anonymoose: That was in reference to _Mac_ clients. And sadly I’ve never heard of “Azaureus.” :-)[/quote]
OK, how about the fact that your ‘review’ is
1) clearly biased – he’s apparently a friend
2) inaccurate – the Autodownload feature is not unique. Who told you that? Let me guess, your friend David.
Why not address these issues instead of taking the piss out of someone’s typo?
I can’t believe you’re going to treat us to an “interview” with the developer as well…wow, a transcript of a chat with a friend of yours. And I guess if he tells you he isn’t recycling Open Source stuff then sticking a GUI and a price tag on it, you’ll “report” that as fact as well huh?
Very, very poor article.
Ethel, I’m sorry you don’t like the article. The typo thing was a joke.
The Autodownload feature is in fact unique on the Mac platform. There is no other native client that can boast of it. As people have pointed out, it might be in the nightly builds of Transmission, but since things can change “overnight” or by the next build, we don’t tend to compare them to stable or beta releases.
Azureus has auto-download.
I think the interface is great, especially how it lets you see the individual files in the torrent, but I cant seem to get it to download individual files from the torrent, it just downloads the whole torrent.
I think that it should be combined with Acquisition as well. It is a nicely designed app, but there are more capable, and less ram intensive options out there for free, so I think you need to have it come with something more.
Maybe it comes fully stocked with all the torrent sights already, and allows you to download a file from separate torrents (it checks to make sure it is the same file), and maybe a scheduling function that would automatically set the bit rate according to the time of day/night and slow it down when it detected you trying to browse the web or use Voip.
If I could have the features of azureus with the interface of xtorrent and the cpu/ram usage of transmission, that would be something I would pay for.
@Smaran – the only reason autodownload is in XTorrent is because it uses the code base of Transmission which, guess what, has that feature. The SVN version of Transmission can reasonably be compared to the beta version of this app.
I’m just curious as to why anybody would actually pay for a bittorrent client given the (arguablly equally good) free alternatives?
i agree with ethel- this is clearly a biased an uninformed review. i’m unsubscribing from this feed.
What is this? A bittorrent program with a price? I don’t think the idea of bittorrent was ever supposed to come at a price. Stick to Azureus. Free and satisfying enough for being so.
Wow once again dave has taken the idea of sharing and opensource and slapped a price tag on it. Should of expected as much from dave, the king of shotty overpriced alternatives to freeware. Keep up the good work dave, you’ve done it again!
Oh, great article by the way. Real impartial…
I just started using Xtorrent and have to say this is by far the best torrent client out there!
I am runng it on a mac powerbook G4 and it works flawlessly.The design is a perfect twin for the new i Tunes and looks great,and i was suprised at the amazingly fast download speeds,compared to other torrent engines.
Well done to the developer, i will definetely be sticking with this one….as i have had no bugs or problems so far!
“hope the program stays that way”
Exellent rating from me! :)
why can’t somebody do something innovative, like build a bridge between ed2k and bittorrent. i can rarely find what i’m looking for in bittorrent trackers, so i download from ed2k then upload it to a bittorrent tracker. i’d be willing to pay for something like that.
Interface is nice but I’m not impressed with performance.
I’ve tried downloading the same torrent file with Azureus and with XTorrent and I consistently get a far better download rate with Azureus than I do with Xtorrent. Shame really as it would be nice to get rid of the bloat that is Azureus.
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