Although many Mac users are content with Azurues (Vuze is a bloat, and Java is best not talked about) and Transmission (I don’t like this app, even though a lot of people swear by it), a lot of them have been patiently waiting for µTorrent to make its way to our favourite platform. It has had a strong fan following on the Windows platform and is generally regarded as one of the best torrent clients in existence. So when µTorrent developers talked about the Mac version back in June 2007, there was a lot of buzz. The project was then dropped due to a lack of active developers.

However, hope has been restored now as a leaked version of µTorrent makes its way through the very medium that it plans to rule. Marking its first public appearance, which happened a little earlier than expected, TorrentFreak reported the leak of the alpha version to The Pirate Bay, one of the largest public trackers in existence .

The official version should be out soon. You can even signup at the µTorrent site if you want to be notified as soon as it lands. As should be evident by the nature of its release, this is a very early and unstable version, which is why we’re burdening ourselves with the risk of taking it for a spin and testing it, just so that you don’t have to. [Ed note: Heck, who are we kidding—we love nothing more than messing with pre-release software!] Read on for the full review.

What plays well?

Even though it is a leaked pre-alpha release, it’s as functional as a torrent client should be:

Cocoa based (although it crashes if you hit ctrl-cmd-d, the keyboard shortcut for invoking the inline dictionary) and looks like most other well designed Mac applications. The only similarity to the interface of the Windows version is the basic structure;

Uses very little system resources, taking up less than 10MB for the most part;

Supports DHT and peer exchange for public tracker torrents;

Download scheduling (BSNL DataOne and MTNL TriBand users can sleep in peace);

Quick Look integration allows you to preview what’s in your torrent files; and

First time in the history of Mac applications, we have a crash feature! [Ed note: Yes, an actual, living, breathing feature that exists solely for the purpose of *crashing* the application!] Just hit File > Crash, and your client will go down the shoot! 

What doesn’t work?

The application is buggy to its very core as of this writing and misses some basic features. Note, again, that this is a very early release and the developers are probably soon going to implement most of these features.

No selective file downloading;

Intel only, so it won’t work on PPC powered Macs;

Removing a torrent file while leeching will delete the downloaded data;

No list of peers (so you can’t ‘kick’ a peer);

Dock badges for upload/download rate don’t work as they should;

Not enough information (like amount of data discarded, pieces size and their progress, etc.);

Search feature is extremely buggy. Searching through 4-5 torrents causes it to crash (hey, if we wanted it to crash, we’d use the aforementioned feature!);

Can’t create torrents (though the icon is present);

Trying to customize the toolbar will crash the client; and

A lot of other minor bugs here and there.

Seeing is believing

I also noticed a lack of small things which you would expect from your client. For example, torrent files can’t be dragged and dropped into it. It automatically starts resumes all download(s) when the client is relaunched even though I might have paused it before I quit the app.

I don’t recommend that you use µTorrent, in its current state, as your default torrent client because it’s not stable, lacks basic features, and poses an assortment of other risks associated with running a pre-alpha release. Nevertheless, it’s a good “first” version of the client and can only get better in the future. If you don’t want to go by my recommendation, hear it from the big guy Simon Morris himself.

BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak in a response to the leak: “Apparently an internal development build of uTorrent for Mac has been leaked publicly. It has been referred to as an “alpha” quality build. The unfortunate part is that we did not intentionally release this build and would strongly recommend folks not to use it as it isn’t yet complete or stable enough to be released to the public.”

So, does this mean freedom from CrossOver at last? Well, not just yet, because I won’t be using it till some of the basic features I mentioned above are incorporated and functional. However, I’m happy to note that the best torrent client for Windows is being ported to the Mac. I can’t wait for the beta/final version to hit the streets and remove Azureus from my Mac for good.

[Ed note: The views of Ashwin notwithstanding, it’s my (and Milind’s) personal recommendation that if you need a BitTorrent client, go with Transmission. It’s lightweight and works as advertised; it’s perfect. We don’t need no Java based crap (Azureus) or any pity from the Windows community (µTorrent). The latter may be the best client on the Windows platform but Transmission can kick it where it hurts any day of the week!]