What's with all of the horrible torrent clients for OS X ?

I'm really surprised at the lack of good/stable torrent apps for OS X. Linux simply kills my Mac in this area and is embarrassing considering the price difference ($Couple hundred for OS X vs free and $2000 vs Free hardware).

How is this possible ? Both Transmission and Vuze don't want to shut down upon request, and I've had to hard re-boot my MB 4 times with Transmission just to get it to finally close. Vuze, after 10 minutes, finally just shut down (just now) which is abominable to me. And how is it even possible that the devs of these and other torrent clients don't react and try to change the fact that their clients are blocked from many good trackers ?

I'd hate to have to install boot camp for this reason, because I really don't want to deal with MS again, but it looks like I may not have a choice in the matter, unless someone knows of a good and stable app which is also fast ?

Doug

yes, transmission takes a while to shut down, but its probably the best out there.
may i suggest bittorrent's own client.

Transmission takes a min or two to shut down, but it works well for me.

If I use my Unix server I will usually use Ctorrent, which I think you can get working for Mac using Fink. That is, if you are actually comfortable with the command line.

I'm still using Tomato, the first free torrent client I came across - quick simple and easy.

Cheers

Hugh

If you really feel that strongly about the clients available in Linux, why not run Linux in a VM with Virtual Box/Fusion/Parallels? Then you can run whichever one floats your boat.

The price of the Mac has nothing to do with the available 3rd party clients. I'm not sure how that assertion is relevant. Just because I paid more for my computer doesn't make 3rd party developers any more or less apt to develop for it. That makes no sense.

I have never had any issues with Azureus now called Vuze. Not one time. I am not a big torrent person, but when I do use them it's always Azureus/Vuse and it's never let me down.

It might take so long for the apps to quit because they are trying to report your upload/download amounts to the tracker prior to quitting.

kmkl said:

yes, transmission takes a while to shut down, but its probably the best out there.
may i suggest bittorrent's own client.

Click to expand...

I've had no troubles with Bittorrent's own client.

dtravis7 said:

I have never had any issues with Azureus now called Vuze. Not one time. I am not a big torrent person, but when I do use them it's always Azureus/Vuse and it's never let me down.

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I concur. No need to spend money on a torrent client when this one is free and works very well.

For me " transmission " works fine without any problems and i have been using it since 2 months.

cwa107 said:

If you really feel that strongly about the clients available in Linux, why not run Linux in a VM with Virtual Box/Fusion/Parallels? Then you can run whichever one floats your boat.

The price of the Mac has nothing to do with the available 3rd party clients. I'm not sure how that assertion is relevant. Just because I paid more for my computer doesn't make 3rd party developers any more or less apt to develop for it. That makes no sense.

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It's not so much that I feel so strongly about them in general, but more the fact that I'm surprised that with such a big fan base (Apple) combined with Apple's reputation for killer software/apps, that there would be such a gap between the two platforms in terms of torrent software development.

As for the price paid, it is relevant in my eyes since it also surprises me that there are no clients which were developed by Apple, since torrent downloading is not illegal (depending on content of course), and since we have to depend on third party devs, those clients which already exist seem to be a lot more unstable than those on other said platforms.

That said, I tried Vuze again, and it was ok. It took a while to shut down (which agitates me for a couple of reasons) but it worked none the less. Perhaps at a slower rate than I'm used to, but if it gets the job done I guess it's good enough for now.

Doug

Doug b said:

I'm really surprised at the lack of good/stable torrent apps for OS X. Linux simply kills my Mac in this area and is embarrassing considering the price difference ($Couple hundred for OS X vs free and $2000 vs Free hardware).

Click to expand...

Free hardware? Where? Please point me to it! (Sorry, couldn't resist. )

Doug b said:

How is this possible ? Both Transmission and Vuze don't want to shut down upon request, and I've had to hard re-boot my MB 4 times with Transmission just to get it to finally close. Vuze, after 10 minutes, finally just shut down (just now) which is abominable to me. And how is it even possible that the devs of these and other torrent clients don't react and try to change the fact that their clients are blocked from many good trackers ?

Click to expand...

Transmission takes a little while on occasion to shut down, but I don't see how this affects you aside from knowing that it's shutting down. It doesn't stall your computer or anything. If you use torrents so much, I don't even see why you do quit the program. Just close the window and leave the app running; its memory footprint is miniscule. And you certainly wouldn't ever need to reboot the whole computer to get it to shut down even if you were forcing it (that's what "Force quit" is for if it bugs you THAT much). I think you're being a little dramatic here. Vuze, I will agree, is terrible, but Azureus has always been terrible on all platforms in my opinion. It's sluggish bloatware.

Doug b said:

I'd hate to have to install boot camp for this reason, because I really don't want to deal with MS again, but it looks like I may not have a choice in the matter, unless someone knows of a good and stable app which is also fast ?

Click to expand...

I've never had any problems with Transmission, and if the program taking an extra 30 seconds to shut down whilst not affecting you in any way, shape or form really bugs you that much, you can just use (Dar)Wine to run µTorrent (Windows-only torrent app widely considered the best on any platform). Or you could perhaps roll back to an earlier version of Transmission, since I seem to recall the delayed quitting not always being there.

I'm very comfortable with the command line. I just installed all of my favorite text applications that I use on FreeBSD and Linux via MacPorts on OS X. Right now, I'm using rtorrent, which is absolutely brilliant.

Since the conversation has gone the way of mac apps matching up with the design I figured I'd mention xtorrent.

It's probably the most "OS X"ish app out there and has a wonderful set of features. Think utorrent with a mac skin. Made for the masses. The developer (Dave Watanabe) is one of the better developers out there with regard to apple usability design (on par with Coda, et al). Most people have used netnewswire which is his too.

Rob

Discerptor said:

Free hardware? Where? Please point me to it! (Sorry, couldn't resist. )

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Actually, that's an easy one if you're friendly with people who work in big offices.. It's called a "throw away". Just last week in fact, a girl I know who works for a bank told me that if I wanted, she'd give me 3 PC's which they were using. Sure, they're a couple of years old, but a couple of years old with Linux means nothing.

Transmission takes a little while on occasion to shut down, but I don't see how this affects you aside from knowing that it's shutting down. It doesn't stall your computer or anything. If you use torrents so much, I don't even see why you do quit the program. Just close the window and leave the app running; its memory footprint is miniscule. And you certainly wouldn't ever need to reboot the whole computer to get it to shut down even if you were forcing it (that's what "Force quit" is for if it bugs you THAT much). I think you're being a little dramatic here. Vuze, I will agree, is terrible, but Azureus has always been terrible on all platforms in my opinion. It's sluggish bloatware.

Click to expand...

Actually, it affects me when it doesn't even shut down with a forced quit. It affects me when I'm trying to shut down the computer, but because Transmissions won't stop, it can't even do that. So yeah, it affects me. Vuze is better. But no matter. I haven't been downloading anything with the Mac since getting my Linux box together. Very refreshing indeed.

doug