uTorrent for Mac leaked

A pre-release alpha version of a Mac version of uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client for Windows, has been leaked to the public.

The details window of uTorrent's Mac client, now confirmed to be in alpha.

(Credit: TorrentFreak)

Available from the Swedish torrent Web site The Pirate Bay, the Cocoa-based client has been expected since 2006 when BitTorrent bought uTorrent and promised to develop a Mac version. There was little said since then, until this past August when uTorrent developer Greg Hazel announced that a Mac version would be ready ''in a few weeks,'' according to the torrent news Web site TorrentFreak.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent's vice president of product evelopment, responded to the leak by saying that the version currently in the wild was not supposed to get out and is not recommended for use, although he hopes that people now believe him when he says that there is a Mac uTorrent client in the works. There is an official notification list for eager users available at the uTorrent site. http://mac.utorrent.com/

Certain key features don't work yet, such as searching. Comments about the app on The Pirate Bay confirm its bugginess. So far it only seems to work on Intel-based Macs, and only those running OS X 10.5 or higher. Because this is an extremely early build of the client, it's not clear at this point how it will stand up to established Mac torrent clients such as Transmission, how it compares to its Windows sibling, or even if this means that a BitTorrent-branded Mac client is in the works.

Ironically, you'll need a torrent client to download this torrent client, since it's only available from a torrent Web site.

[Via TorrentFreak]