My observations thus far

[Fulminated Mercury]

Dear uTorrent team.

I have used your PC version for some time now on my Dell, and swear by it over all other bittorrent applications. I am very happy to at last be able to use uTorrent on my shiny new iMac! My Dell only has a Pentium 4, 1.8Ghz, while my Mac has a Core 2 Duo 2.8.

In this note I shall compare some of the features that are offered in the PC version that are not in the Mac Beta that I consider important (priority) additions as soon as the team(s) can get to them. I shall also offer some observations I have made in comparing uTorrent Mac to the program I was previously using (on my Mac), Transmission.

First of all let me preface this by saying that your Beta version is already better than the existing version of Transmission in many ways (enough ways that I have since transferred all of my active torrents on the Mac from Transmission to uTorrent). Congrats to your team on this remarkable achievement (in Beta).

Right off the bat however, I will tell you that I have attempted to run both your PC version and your Mac version behind a firewall that I did not control (and therefore had closed ports) and was NOT able to achieve much success (if any) in getting my numerous torrents to download. The VERY SAME torrent files in Transmission however, behind a closed port, were some how able to get through, download (or upload) the data, and complete the seeding cycle.

I am now behind a router that I control, on a cable connection (Comcast) and I have opened the ports to both uTorrent and Transmission (using separate ports of course). In this environment both the Mac versions and the PC versions are the hands down winners. Some torrents that Transmission did not seem to be able to find any seeds or leechers for (with an open listening port) work fine in uTorrent.

As for being a "resource hog", your PC version is about the best program on the planet for NOT hogging resources. I cannot say the same thing for your Mac version at all. My 1.8Ghz P4 Dell does a better job than the Core2 2.8Ghz iMac when it comes to that, with the same exact torrents active. There is a long wait for web pages to open in Safari or Firefox on the Mac while uTorrent is open, VS. the slow old PC, which opens web pages much more quickly with uTorrent running.

Now onto the Mac version specifically. I download (and upload) a lot of torrents. I tend to like to seed torrents I create myself for at least 2000% seed time (In some cases forever), while I consider 150% a fair seed time on torrents I have downloaded. I keep my files on an external 750GB hard drive that I can transfer between the Mac and the PC, so as to be able to seed from either one (or download). Due to some of the limitations of the Mac Beta, and the fact that I have multiple folders that I download from and into, this is not an easy task.

I think the FIRST thing that should be added to the Mac version is the ability to specify the download location upon launching a new torrent. This way, if there is already data present, you can direct it to the appropriate folder. SECONDLY, once the torrent is active, you should be able to CHANGE the download location as you can i the PC version by right clicking, selecting Advanced/Download Location. In order to direct the Mac version to pre-existing data, I had to set the default download location to the root folder of the data before adding the torrent file. Once this was done, the Mac version (thankfully) remembered the download path, regardless of changes to the default download path.

I decided to "see if I could break it". I could. I changed the name of the Volume containing my active torrents. uTorrent for Mac was not amused. All my torrents generated errors as to be expected (I was hoping, although not expecting that it would have detected the volume name change and automatically adjust the download paths to the torrents.) However, what I DIDN'T EXPECT was that once I changed the name of the volume back to it's previous designation, uTorrent could not recover. I rebooted the application and the computer, but to no avail. Files were still missing according to uTorrent, even though the paths were correct. Not even a force re-check corrected this, much to my surprise. (Instead of saying files missing, it said 0% complete)

I had to remove the torrent from the list, change the default download location to the approriate path, and then add the torrent file again in order to get it to find the previously downloaded data again.

For years I have used the path "Incomplete Torrents" to download my torrents to, and the path "Completed Torrents" for the completed files to be transferred to (upon completion). It would be nice to have the ability to specify the two paths in this manner in the Mac version.

You offer the option to "move torrent files to trash", but not the option to "save all torrent files" to a specific path. I have found it highly useful to have uTorrent save all my torrent files to a separate folder, so that perhaps a year or two later if I need to download the files again, and can no longer find the same torrent file anywhere online, I can check my "Torrent Archive" folder and launch the original torrent file that I used previously. VERY USEFUL. Miuch more useful than moving torrent files to the trash, which is only "helpful" if you have a torrent hot folder, although even in that case, I would still prefer to move the torrent file to an archive folder, not the trash.

And, one last request. I like to be able to launch the individual files from the "files" tab of each torrent on the PC version by double clicking on the file names. In the Mac version my only option is to "Right Click" (or Control Click) the file name and select "show in finder". It would be nice to be able to launch the files directly from uTorrent for Mac just as you can on the PC version.

And lastly, I realize this is just a Beta version, but I hope you are moving towards identical features and GUI in both your Mac and PC version at some point. Once it is done "right", might as well do it the same "right" way on both platforms.

Hope this helps. I'll get back to you if I am able to "break" anything else!

Best regards,

Dave Franklin (aka Fulminated Mercury)

[NoOneButMe]

Have you read the forums at all? Everything you requested or mentioned was covered already. And its all on the todo list.

For the volume thing, what happens is that uTorrent doesn't check to see if the path is mounted or not and instead creates folders as needed to get to the saved directory path. It can't find the data because it isn't mounted. If you delete the directory it creates then mounts, its fine.

And FWIW, A copy of the torrents get saved to $HOME/Library/Application Support/uTorrent/.

[cinthia]

I agree with your frustration but am perplexed. First you say uTorrent is better than Transmission,THEN mention several badly needed features, missing from uTorrents which Transmission already has?!

"I think the FIRST thing that should be added to the Mac version is the ability to specify the download location upon launching a new torrent. This way, if there is already data present, you can direct it to the appropriate folder. SECONDLY, once the torrent is active, you should be able to CHANGE the download location as you can i the PC version by right clicking, selecting Advanced/Download Location. In order to direct the Mac version to pre-existing data, I had to set the default download location to the root folder of the data before adding the torrent file. Once this was done, the Mac version (thankfully) remembered the download path, regardless of changes to the default download path."

I have nothing to do with software but am so frustrated with uTorrent I want to rip my hair out, mostly by the number of sites and people who support uTorrent despite the fact that it's lacking basic features of other torrent software, not to mention cumbersome & unfriendly to use. I feel like I'm in the children's story "The Emperor's New Clothes" where everybody went along because everybody else went along.