Comments on: Xtorrent public beta 1 reviewed

By: Xtorrent 1.0 Review | TorrentFreak

Xtorrent 1.0 Review | TorrentFreak — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:01:01 +0000

[...] the new BitTorrent client for Mac OS X, just rolled out of the beta phase. In September, we reviewed the first public beta, which initially looked like a promising application. However, issues like [...]

By: Xtorrent Public Beta 3 Adds RSS Support | TorrentFreak

Xtorrent Public Beta 3 Adds RSS Support | TorrentFreak — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:36:53 +0000

[...] We first wrote about Xtorrent in September of last year while it was still in private beta, then went on to review the first public beta. [...]

By: Transmission 0.7 Beta - Redefining BitTorrent on the Mac « Quantum Thinking

Transmission 0.7 Beta - Redefining BitTorrent on the Mac « Quantum Thinking — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 05:24:57 +0000

[...] Watch Folder A feature I was very excited about when I reviewed Xtorrent last month was Autodownload, an option, if activated would automatically copy .torrent files on the desktop to Xtorrent’s support folder and start downloading them. This makes torrenting as easy as downloading files via HTTP, as all the popular Mac browsers save files to the desktop by default. Transmission now has this ability too! [...]

By: Transmission 0.7 Beta - Redefining BitTorrent on the Mac at Torrentfreak

Transmission 0.7 Beta - Redefining BitTorrent on the Mac at Torrentfreak — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:26:03 +0000

By: RiK

RiK — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 10:48:00 +0000

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.

By: sarge

sarge — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:52:06 +0000

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.

By: paul

paul — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 00:15:16 +0000

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! :)

By: Spamburglar

Spamburglar — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 05:20:54 +0000

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…

By: Theflux00

Theflux00 — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:38:48 +0000

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.

By: smitty

smitty — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:57:53 +0000

i agree with ethel- this is clearly a biased an uninformed review. i’m unsubscribing from this feed.

By: jah

jah — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:50:44 +0000

@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?

By: michael

michael — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:00:46 +0000

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.

By: Vic

Vic — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 09:04:33 +0000

Azureus has auto-download.

By: Smaran

Smaran — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 07:21:48 +0000

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.

By: Ethel

Ethel — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 06:54:20 +0000

[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.

By: Smaran

Smaran — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 06:38:45 +0000

@anonymoose: That was in reference to _Mac_ clients. And sadly I’ve never heard of “Azaureus.” :-)

By: luna

luna — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 02:15:21 +0000

Great apps, it looks simular to bitrocket but the live seach is awesomer.

By: Neil Roberts

Neil Roberts — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 02:14:59 +0000

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.

By: theDoseâ„¢

theDoseâ„¢ — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:23:17 +0000

I looks nice, but I’ll stick with Bits on Wheels until David combines it with aquisition…

By: anonymoose

anonymoose — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:58:45 +0000

Another feature unique to Xtorrent is Autodownload.

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.

By: thread

thread — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:39:37 +0000

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?

By: Clemens

Clemens — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:37:06 +0000

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.

By: skylor

skylor — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:31:43 +0000

This is transmission with a fun interface.I will not pay for that.

By: Boards of Canada

Boards of Canada — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:28:14 +0000

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.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:18:33 +0000

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…

By: jah

jah — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:00:31 +0000

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.

By: Biffo

Biffo — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:52:39 +0000

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.

By: sam

sam — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 10:26:54 +0000

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.