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:

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Let’s start off with some screenshots.

The Installation Disk Image

Main Window with Downloads

Click to enlarge.

Speed
The main reason I like uTorrent so much is because downloads are considerably faster in it than in any other BitTorrent client. This held true when I compared uTorrent Mac to Transmission and Xtorrent. The downloads speeds in both couldn’t match uTorrent’s. Azureus was the only one that came close, just as I had expected.

Application Launch Time
uTorrent Mac, just like its Windows counterpart, is super-light. It launches immediately (not even 1 bounce in the Dock!). This is clearly one piece of well-coded software. Probably part of the reason why BitTorrent Inc decided to buy it.

Interface
uTorrent Mac has a simple, yet appealing interface that is easy to use and navigate. It’s not as stylish as Xtorrent’s, but then again, no one can create interfaces like David Watanabe.

Search
Though it may seem that uTorrent has some sort of built-in search functionality, currently only offered by BitRocket and Xtorrent on the Mac, it does not. Typing something such as “HDTV” into the search box and hitting return will merely open a BitTorrent.com search page in your default browser.

Conclusion
It’s too early to draw conclusions but it’s a great first impression, especially for a pre-release version.

It’s worth mentioning that some Mac users such as myself like uTorrent so much, we even prefer running it under emulation than using one of the available Mac BitTorrent clients. uTorrent is not only the most popular Windows BitTorrent client according to a poll we conducted last year, but also the winner of our BitTorrent clients comparison.

Many of you are probably dying to download uTorrent Mac. Hang in there, it’s coming real soon.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Since then, a lot has changed. As expected, a lot of bugs have been stomped out and the overall performance of the app has been improved. Significant new features include a redesigned swarm column, drag-and-drop support, the ability to browse the file structure of torrents, RSS (torrentcast) support and multi-tracker support.

The most prominent new feature Xtorrent has gained is an in-built RSS catcher. This makes it easy for users to subscribe to BitTorrent feeds right inside the application, instead of having to use a separate RSS reader and then manually (or automatically, depending on your ‘autodownload’ settings) add the torrents to Xtorrent.

Many people seem to be outraged at the fact of paying for a BitTorrent client, but it seems Xtorrent has a lot going for it. Other than Azureus, it’s the only Mac BitTorrent client that can subscribe to RSS feeds, and the only one that can do so without a plug-in. It’s also the only stable client for the Mac with in-built search. BitRocket was the first to implement this, but is still very buggy and crashes often.

David Watanabe, the developer of Xtorrent, says that the first non-beta release is “on the horizon” and that he expects to release it within the next few weeks. The third public beta is pretty stable and doesn’t seem to have any bugs, but Watanabe nevertheless warns that there might “likely [be] undiscovered bugs.” He is currently offering Xtorrent at a discounted pre-release price of $15.89. Once 1.0 is released, the price will go up to $18.99.

Note: Xtorrent is free to use for now, and doesn’t require a license. But despite the fact that it’s a useful app with a sexy UI, it has yet to replace Transmission (beta) as my primary BitTorrent client. I have a soft spot for FOSS.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.