Internet download manager - mac

Rod


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Not sure which OS you are referring to but unless your internet connection is unstable you really shouldn't need one. However if you have problems with servers dropping out as my wife once did with talking books from our local library (no resume button) and you don't mind paying for it then Speed Download is hard to beat. There was a free app from the App Store called Fetch but it was nowhere near as good.


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Not sure which OS you are referring to but unless your internet connection is unstable you really shouldn't need one. However if you have problems with servers dropping out as my wife once did with talking books from our local library (no resume button) and you don't mind paying for it then Speed Download is hard to beat. There was a free app from the App Store called Fetch but it was nowhere near as good.

The developer of Speed Download has shut down and the app is no longer available for purchase. In fact, the developer of a similar app, Folx, now has control over his old domain to hawk their app instead. The SD developer caught a lot of flak years ago for requiring paid upgrades with claims that it was "faster than ever", but no basis for supporting those claims. As it was, the app was last updated in 2012, an eternity in today's climate.

I would give Progressive Downloader a whirl. It's free and is good enough for what it does. I'm not sure if any of the paid alternatives offer any value above what this app can do.
Progressive Downloader for Mac | MacUpdate
 
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Hwwk is good word as Speed Downloader was rubbish and they required a payment each time the Mac OS was upgraded. Suggest leaving OS X to manage downloads.
 

Rod


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Thanks Harry I didn't realise that, just goes to show how often I use it.
I believe my wife still does for the aforementioned reason but we haven't needed to update for a long time. The reason for using it at all was not for speed but because it persisted with downloads despite interruption from server not responding, Internet connection lost etc.without having to start over.


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I believe my wife still does for the aforementioned reason but we haven't needed to update for a long time. The reason for using it at all was not for speed but because it persisted with downloads despite interruption from server not responding, Internet connection lost etc.without having to start over.

In my Windows days, there was a download manager that actually could speed up your downloads by establishing multiple connections to the download server. It would use each connection to download a different chunk of the file, then put them all together when done. No idea what the name of it was anymore. I tried Speed Download expecting the same things when I first switched to OS X some 10 years ago, but never saw the speed boost the developer claimed there'd be.
 
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Safari has always done that also Rod.
 
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1, Safari.

2. uTorrent.

Despite what developers your internet speedcontrols your download speed. Period.
 
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chas_m

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Utorrent is not a downloads manager in the sense we are using it in this discussion.
 

Rod


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Safari has always done that also Rod.

You may be right harryb2448 but I was there when my wife was trying to download talking books from Bolinda Audio and if a download stopped for what ever reason, power failure, server dropout or lost connection no amount of pressing the resume button on Safari would take up where it left off. We had to go back to the site, login with my wife's Library password, select the book again and begin a new download from the beginning. With a slow and unreliable connection and sometimes three tries over 6 hrs + we may have been able to download one book. Speed download on the other hand could download 3 books at the same time and even turning off the computer would not stop its dogged progress towards completing the downloads the minute it was turned back on.

As for using multiple connections to speed the download process thats what Progressive Downloader claims to do "supports multi-thread downloading and mirror search". to speed downloads, however I agree that ultimately "your internet speed controls your download speed" but sometimes your internet speed exceeds the speed of a server.
 

Rod


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lenovolenovo, cutting back to the chase and despite what has been said this forum is all about giving users what they need and sometimes what they want. So I have given the Folx Go+ app a whirl and at first glance it looks ok. Not many reviews on the app store though but that can be a good thing. I have found people are very motivated to complain rather than write a positive review. It is available at "Original Price" for a limited time but at $20.00 it's still a bit steep. Perhaps give the description a look on the App Store and see what you think.
 
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Despite what developers your internet speedcontrols your download speed. Period.

Of course you can't download faster than what your internet connection is capable of. However, when downloading a file from a server, whose bandwidth is likely far in excess of ours, they only allot a tiny portion of it per download. As stated previously, some software can trick some servers into sending them bits of the same file over multiple streams, speeding up the overall process. I haven't felt the need to use software like this in a very long time, but back when my connection was a bit slower and less reliable, it most certainly did work as advertised.
 

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