Mac OS X is heralded as the most appealing operating system on the market and one of the most capable as well thanks to its BSD (Unix) core.
Sadly, the number of user-friendly, appealing BitTorrent clients available for the platform are very few in comparison to the number of those available for Windows.
In this article we will highlight the most popular Mac BitTorrent applications and compare their features.
BitTorrent OSXLet’s start with the granddaddy of them all, Bram Cohen’s self-titled BitTorrent application. It’s gotten kind of confusing since he named the protocol, his company and his application all BitTorrent. BitTorrent OSX is a very (and I mean very) basic application. It’s as feature-full as Safari’s download box and that’s not saying much. Now some people wouldn’t mind something like that, but if you’re looking for simplicity Transmission is a much better choice. BitTorrent OSX also takes an age to start up on my MacBook Pro.
Transmission is my current Mac B.T. client of choice. It’s an Open Source project, maintained by the developer of the popular Mac DVD ripping application, HandBrake. Transmission does its job well. A neat feature it offers is the ability to view download and upload rates in the dock, so I don’t even have to open up the program to check how my downloads are going. Another great thing Transmission does is copy the .torrent file to its support folder, then trash the original file from my desktop thereby leaving no mess of files behind for me to clean up. Now just like everything Transmission has its flaws, the biggest of which is that Demonoid, a leading BitTorrent directory has banned it on ocassion! They say it doesn’t adhere to set standards.
Related
- Top 5 BitTorrent Clients for MAC
- Why eXeem shouldn’t be replacing our bittorrent clients
- How BitTorrent Clients Slow Down Windows
- BitTorrent clients in NASes and Routers
Yeah I’m going to agree that OSX is a better OS than Windows. I’m so freakin’ tired of OS problems. I’ve rarely if ever seen any for OSX
Since the time of this post Transmission has only gotten better. I was surprised not to see it listed in either the Mac software section or the BitTorrent client section. I’d certainly recommend it over TomatoTorrent or the original BitTorrent though I am interested to see how uTorrent for Mac matches up (whenever it comes out of closed beta). Nice review but one thing notably missing is a download page link:
http://transmission.m0k.org/download.php