uTorrent Mac vs. Azureus Mac: “

In our review of uTorrent we concluded that we got slightly higher download speeds than in Azureus. However, it’s wasn’t a big enough difference to conclude that it was significantly faster than Azureus.

Slyck posted an article in which they publish statistical data they received from an anonymous source. According to these statistics uTorrent is more than twice as fast as Azureus, something that I find hard to believe.

Here’s what Slyck’s source reports:

Azureus Mac
Max Rate Seen: 297 KB/s
Average Rate: 235 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 155 MB
Average CPU: 20%

µTorrent Mac
Max Rate Seen: 840KB/s
Average Rate: 698 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 14 MB
Average CPU: 6%

Slyck received these stats from an anonymous source. Probably someone working at BitTorrent Inc because these stats are a little subjective to say the least. It is hard to get differences like this without cheating the protocol, something that Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Azureus, agrees with:

‘We are not aware of any such stats, and clearly would doubt their validity. BitTorrent is a standard, and clients have, by design, limited ways to optimize transfer speeds. We have implemented features to optimize ‘around’ the protocol, such as PeerExchange, but getting such wide variations without ‘bastardizing’ the protocol beyond recognition (and making it not compliant/compatible in the process) make these numbers look VERY suspicious, if not ridiculous.’

I’ve been in the position to test an Alpha version of the Mac version of BitTorrent and I also tested Azureus’ Mac version and I came up with figures that clearly favor uTorrent, but not as dramatically as the statistics provided by BitTorrent Inc the anonymous source.

I decided to run my own comparison test using the exact same setup for both clients. The results are based on downloading 3 .torrent files that differed in swarm size and file size. Here’s what I found :

Azureus Mac
Max Rate Seen: 1.42 MB/s
Average Rate: 769 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 130 MB
Average CPU: 18%

µTorrent Mac
Max Rate Seen: 1.28 MB/s
Average Rate: 788 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 16 MB
Average CPU: 7%

The results are quite clear. It is hard to conclude that downloads will go faster with Azureus or uTorrent. Perhaps a difference can be found in a scientific and controlled setting, but no significant difference is observed in a real-life setting. One thing is clear though, the huge difference in download speed reported by Slyck’s anonymous source doesn’t make sense.

What we can see from both comparisons is that uTorrent for Mac, just like its Windows counterpart, uses less CPU and RAM. This is definitely a reason for me, and probably a lot of other BitTorrent users with me, to try uTorrent as soon as it’s released.

apple, Azureus, mac, utorrent

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(Via Torrentfreak.)

In the world of design one of your most important tools will always be your font management system. Without a reliable system in place your work will soon spin out of control with your projects looking non-uniform and resembling an alphabet soup. Well okay maybe not that bad but font management is actually quite important and not always entirely that straight forward.

Enter Linotype’s FontExplorer X – a robust and stable program for managing all your fonts, both system and user added. If the fact that it has been developed by Linotype, the world’s leader in fonts, doesn’t excite you, let’s take a look at some of its enterprise level features.

Cross platform support
Why use an amazing program on your Mac and not be able to use it on your PC? FontExplorer X recently completed its PC beta program, so almost all the amazing features you’re about to find out about will be there for you.

Intuitive iTunes-style interface
So you don’t think of iTunes as being at an ‘enterprise’ level, but this quickly becomes an IT director’s dream. If a user can rock to the beat of their music collection, they can easily feel confident in having full control over the management of their fonts. Activating fonts is a simple click of a check box. Fonts can also be color coded so you can quickly find those fonts you just picked for your next brochure.

Much like playlists and smart playlists in iTunes, users can use their own custom sets with ease. With the smart set feature you can create an intelligent font set that is automatically created based on the criteria you specify. So you want a set that contains only OpenType fonts, Bold-faced and with a copy-write of 1998? Simply enter in those variables and FontExporer will create a font set based on what it can find in your current font library. My favorite use of this feature is a smart set that finds all activated fonts, this allows me to turn off all my fonts with a single click and bring me to the base system fonts for troubleshooting.

Unimaginably quick activation time
While testing this software in our lab we were able to open over 5,000+ fonts at one time in less than 3 minutes. This same operation tried with Extensis Suitcase X1 resulted in a spinning wheel that rendered our system useless until we forced quit out of Suitcase. Definitely not an acceptable action as now you’ve messed up your font cache and you now need to go reset over 70% of Suitcase’s preferences in order to restore proper font order.

In-depth font information and previews
FontExplorer provides the most detailed information about fonts that I have ever found in a font management system. A simple click on the desired font and a preview is displayed in the bottom window with details of the font’s official family, format, and user modifiable comments displayed clearly.

Double click on that same font and a robust information window is opened. The summary tab details just about everything you could ever want to know about a font including it’s Foundry, Trademark information, purchase location, version and copy-write information. A 5-star based rating system is included that allows designers to quickly pick their best fonts as they work. A click to the Characters tab provides you with a preview of the individual characters included in the font along with options for customizing the view. The detailed Preview tab allows you to sample your fonts in a variety of sizes and colors to find the perfect match you’ve always wanted.

Easily export fonts
When you’re finished with a project, you sometimes have the need to hand off the fonts to the printer or prepress house. FontExplorer gives you several options for copying out fonts. A simple drag and drop to your desktop can either copy the fonts directly to your desktop, put them in a disk image, or my personal favorite of placing them into a .zip archive. The benefit of the .zip archive is they’re already packaged and ready to email out. This same feature will also allow you to select a font’s preview text and drag it to your desktop, thus saving a .jpg image of the preview that’s perfect for sending out for approval from your client.

Auto-activation support
While some firms frown on that auto-activation of fonts for obvious purposes, FontExplorer gives you the option nonetheless. Currently they have plug-ins for all of the Adobe products as well as Quark.

Do you have an application that doesn’t fall under either of those two companies? No problem as again FontExplorer has you covered. In the preferences you can select which programs to intercept font requests from. Your CEO just sent you an InDesign document that he needs you to magically turn all nice and pretty for a presentation in an hour, of course he fails to provide you with the 25 fonts he used to create his masterpiece. Once you open the file, FontExplorer will prompt you to load the missing fonts and if they’re already in your library will attempt to load them automatically. Don’t like your fonts being opened for you? FontExplorer also allows you to select a text-based document and will scan it for fonts even without the editing applications installed on your computer.

Built-in font cache cleaning
This is almost a minor point, because in our testing and company-wide release of this software, the need for cleaning up corrupted font caches is a thing of the past. But if you ever get to that point, the program has an area for cleaning your application and system font caches with a simple click. If you allow FontExplorer to manage the actual font folder structure, you can also optimize and clean out unused fonts from this area.

Built-in Linotype store access
Think of it as an iTunes for your fonts. Not only does it keep your fonts all nice and tidy, it also allows you to purchase new fonts for your collection right through the software. Fonts are then added to your Library upon purchase.

Amazing software at an amazing price
So you’re ready to make the switch, you have your credit card ready and you really want to order. Unfortunately for your credit card company this software is 100% free. All you need to do is download it from the Linotype website and enjoy!

So with all those pros, are there any cons? Well if you just spent a ton of money on another solution you’ll feel really bad about that decision. The only thing we’ve really found that isn’t a huge concern is a lack of the ability to connect to a font server solution. But if you’re diligent about managing your fonts, a large company can get by without this feature. Also from time to time, we noticed that the cache cleaning’s didn’t always work, but we also haven’t had a need to clean them up since installing FontExplorer, so it’s a good trade off.

As always we love hearing any feedback you might have from using this software, so please don’t hesitate to contact us and let us know what you think.

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(Via MacApper.)

1. Safari ist der von Apple mitgelieferte, vorinstallierte Browser. Tabbed browsing, angenehmes Interface, und perfekte Integrierung in OSX. Dazu noch einer der schnellsten Browser für den Mac. Nachteile sind das es keine der bei Firefox so beliebten Extensions gibt, mit denen man die Funktionen des Browsers erweitern kann. Ebenfalls ein Problem ist, daß es immer noch mal passieren kann, daß man auf Webseiten stößt mit denen Safari so seine Schwierigkeiten hat, weil Sie Für den Explorer konzipiert sind. Allerdings passiert das immer seltener.

2. Firefox ist sicher einer der beliebtesten Browser im Augenblick, und generell schwer im kommen, auch wenn er immer noch nicht annähernd den Marktanteil vom Internet Explorer hat. Der Hauptgrund für die Beliebtheit von Firefox liegt sicherlich in den Extensions – Kleinstprogramme die zum Beispiel Wetterberichte bringen, Listen von neuen Torrents, Adblocker, etc. Davon mal abgesehen soll FF auch deutlich sicherer sein als IE. Es gibt auch noch eine für OS X optimierte Variante von FF namens BonEcho.

3. Flock ist eine der unbekannteren Alternativen. Für solche User die viel Photos uploaden auf Flickr, oder den social bookmarking Dienst delicious, oder auch gerne mal vom Browser aus bloggen möchten, ist Flock eine Ideallösung. Zusätzlich ist es auch noch möglich native Firefox Extensions auch auf Flock zu installieren, wenn man das kleine Zusatzprogramm Flocker installiert, und dann die heruntergeladenen Extensions per drag and drop mit Flocker für Flock formatiert. Negativ zu bemerken ist dabei, ist Flock eindeutig langsamer ist als Safari.

4. Opera wäre dann die nächste Alternative. Seit langem schon auf dem Markt (mittlerweile bei 9.2 angekommen), so ist Opera eine ausgereifte Version. Problemlos, gut integrierbar in OS X, Miniaturbilder für die Tabs, integrierte Bittorentanwendung, etc. Eine echte Alternative, mit durchaus nützlichen Zusatzfunktionen, ohne dabei groß an Geschwindigkeit einzubüßen.

5. Shiira ist ein relativ junger Browser, der auf derselben Technologie wie auch Safari basiert. Dies bedeutet eine gute Einbindung in OS X, und hohe Geschwindigkeit. Zusätzlich gibt es noch die Miniaturbilder für die Tabs, und ein insgesamt angenehmes Erscheinungsbild. Durchaus Empfehlenswert.

6. Omniweb ist die einzige Shareware Applikation unter den hier vorgestellten Browsern. Es mag etwas verschwenderisch klingen Geld für einen Webbrowser auszugeben, wenn es soviele kostenlose Alternativen gibt. Und dem kann ich auch nur beipflichten. Es ist ein durchaus respektables Programm mit vielen nützlichen Funktionen, aber im Grunde nichts was es rechtfertigen würde dafür zu bezahlen.

7. Camino ist ein weiterer Mozilla Browser. Tabbed browsing, restore sessions, rss feed detection. Geschwindigkeit vergleichbar mit Safari.

8. Sunrise basiert auf dem Safari Webkit, wie auch Shiira. Minimalistisch, mit Miniaturbildern für die Bookmarks. Schnell, aber auch nicht mehr.

9. Navigator, für alle Nostalgiker. Ich kann mich noch daran erinnern, daß der Netscape Navigator mein erster Internet Browser war. Nachdem Microsoft ihn ausgelöscht hatte, versucht Netscape jetzt ein Comeback. Too little, too late.

10. Internet Explorer. Nie wieder! Ihr seid jetzt bei Mac angekommen, und daß heißt Ihr dürft jetzt richtige Software benutzen.

Urteil: Für den Normalbenutzer ist Safari mehr als ausreichend. Er ist schnell, perfekt integriert, und bietet die meisten der wichtigen Neuerung an. Als nächstes wären bei mir (in dieser Reihenfolge) Shiira, Flock, Camino, und Opera, wobei Flock vor allem auf Grund der Geschwindigkeit Punkte verliert. Firefox liegt klar hinten, weil es weniger Funktionen hat als Flock, und je mehr Extensions man installiert, desto langsamer und überfrachteter ist es. Ohne diese Extensions aber, hat Firefox nur noch gegenüber IE einen kleinen Sicherheitsvorteil. Sunrise und Navigator haben keinerlei erwähnenswerte Vorteile gegenüber der Konkurrenz. Omniweb läuft als Shareware für mich außer Konkurrenz. Viel Spaß!

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is the widely used, XML based system for distributing syndication of many news sites and blogs. In order to use this popular technology, the use of an aggregator is required. There are many popular RSS aggregators available on the mac platform. In this post I will review and compare a few of the newest and most popular: NetNewsWire, Newsfire, Newslife, Vienna, and, OS X’s own built in web browser/RSS reader, Safari.

NetNewsWire Ranchero Software, $25.95

Pros: Free Lite version available, auto-collection, smart folders, search, synchronization with newsgator service, scriptable, built-in efficient web browser.

Cons: No item threading, No ability to put items in context, No spotlight integration, No customizable color labels, lowest automatic refresh time is 30 minutes.

Newsfire Dave Watanabe, $20

Pros: Sleek design, efficiently functional interface, integrated search, smart folders, integrates with several desktop del.icio.us applications such as Pukka, fairly quick automatic refresh time of merely 5 minutes.

Cons: No Labels, no AI for efficient Smart Folders, no way to archive feeds, no integrated synchronization.

Newslife ThinkMac Software, $20, Public Beta

Pros: Easy to use, familiar and efficient interface, works seamlessly with OS X apps like Safari and iTunes, includes tools for quick posting to social bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us, ‘Speck’ article text to speech capabilities.

Cons: In beta and still rather buggy, fastest automatic refresh time is 20 minutes, $20 is a rather steep price for it’s present state- even though it’s in public beta the nag screens can become quite an annoyance.

Vienna Open Community UK, Freeware, Open Source

Pros: Simple and easy-to-use interface, smart folders, ability to flag individual articles.

Cons: Vienna cannot learn which item to place in a smart folder by experience, no colored labels for organizing items, very little support for podcasts or any other media delivered via RSS, no integration with online RSS services.

Safari RSS Apple Inc., Bundled with Mac OS X

Pros: Built into OS X, allows for integrated RSS reading and web browsing seamlessly, Solid search and archiving, modifiable article length.

Cons: Safari may not be your browser of preference so the advantage of having RSS integrated in your web browser (though there are a few more browsers with this same capability, notably firefox), most of the ‘standard’ features (smart folders, social bookmarking etc.) are not present.

Conclusion: Go with Newsfire if you have the money, otherwise go with NetNewsWire Lite. Both have solid, intuitive interfaces, and the great features you’ve come to expect from modern RSS applications.

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(Via Clippings.)

by Adam Pash

Quicksilver is bar-none the best productivity application on the market today. Whether we’re talking Mac, Windows, or Linux, freeware or shareware, this Mac-only, freeware application launcher-and-then-some is the best productivity booster I have on my computer.

Quicksilver can be used to launch files and applications, manipulate data, and seamlessly plug into almost any application on your Mac so that you can perform actions as soon as you think of them in a few short keystrokes. The only problem with Quicksilver is that a lot of people also find it to be one of the most obtuse desktop applications around. In this first part of our Quicksilver series, I’m going to introduce you to the basics of Quicksilver to lay t“

(Via .)