uTorrent for Mac The Fastest Torrent Client

Long recognized as the fastest torrent client for Windows, the Mac version of uTorrent finally discarded its beta status today. After nearly three years of development, two of them in the public eye, the stable version of uTorrent for Mac contains the same protocol enhancements that make the Windows version so flexible.

uTorrent for Mac

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Built natively in Cocoa, these include the new uTransport protocol, protocol encryption, distributed hash table, and peer exchange support. uTP is a relatively new protocol that slows down all connection traffic when a congestion has been detected until the problem has been cleared. It basically prevents one person's connection from crowding out others, and this is the first time it's been available to Mac users.

In the blog post announcing the new Mac version, the vice president of product management for uTorrent's parent company BitTorrent, Simon Morris, noted, "Feature parity is the goal for all of our consumer clients." Though there still are some minor features not in the Mac version, such as autoshutdown after completion, what's missing doesn't seem to affect the program's overall behavior.