Thursday, December 4, 2008

Updated uTorrent for Mac (0.9.0.1) Available for Download

New release fixes Finder crash, but causes issue with "preferences"

BitTorrent Inc has released a new version of its popular BitTorrent client (recently released on Mac), uTorrent 0.9.0.1. The new release fixes a crash in Finder, and delivers a promise from the development team that PPC users will soon be supported just as well as Intel users.

“We've just released µTorrent Mac 0.9.0.1,” reads a forum post signed by kjk, one of the µTorrent Mac Developers. “This minor update works-around a problem in Mac OS that causes crash in Finder when double-clicking on '.torrent' file when uTorrent is the default application for .torrent files,” the post goes.

“This unfortunately required to change name of the file in which we store preferences, so you might lose some of your preferences,” the developer explains. “µTorrent Mac is currently released as Intel only and only for 10.5 (Leopard). Preliminary support for PPC is in the binary, but it is unstable and not recommended for general use. PPC support will improve in the near future,” the post ends.

For those who aren't very familiar with µTorrent, the app is a BitTorrent client, which follows the rules of a protocol such as HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). BitTorrent is a protocol allowing you to download files quickly, by permitting its download and the upload of parts of it at the same time.

Since it is a lot cheaper, faster, and more efficient to distribute files using BitTorrent than a regular download, the method is often resorted to for distribution of very large files, very popular files, and files available for free. Just as there are multiple HTTP clients, there are multiple BitTorrent clients, and µTorrent is one of them.

NOTES:

BitTorrent is purely a content distribution method, and does not incorporate any technology to differentiate between content that is legitimately shared and content that is pirated – just like a web browser.

Anybody can see your IP address when using peer to peer clients such as µTorrent. This identifies your computer on the Internet, so you'd better not break your country's laws concerning copyrighted content while using µTorrent.

Download µTorrent for Mac Beta (Free)