uTorrent on your Mac? Ye right!

I have to admit! There are a couple of things, that I miss from Windows: “blue screens of death”, the security and performance (ah feel the irony), but most of all, and this being the import one, some apps. That’s right, there are a couple of apps I really enjoy, that don’t exist in Mac. There’s no good eMule client (and stop yelling about aMule, that’s not the same!) and I miss using my favorite BitTorrent client, uTorrent!This is the fastest and smartest BitTorrent client out there, and it’s a shame you don’t have it on Mac. Well, not native, because now there is a really smart way to run this clean on Mac, so just keep reading!

If you come from Linux, you probably are familiar with the Wine project, which is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. This allows you to run a great number of Windows only applications, without emulating Windows itself. And you might ask: what about Mac OS X? Doesn’t it descend from Unix? That’s right, Mac OS X kernel is called Darwin, and comes in direct line from Unix.
Wine is also implemented in Mac, and there are 2 choices. The first is a commercial one from the guys at CodeWeavers, and is called CrossOver. But if you are like me, you will use a free (both as beer and freedom), version of Wine for Mac, which is called Darwine (very clever, Darwin + Wine, AH!).

Its very easy, just grab a copy of Darwine, put it on your Applications folder and make sure you also have installed X11 that came with your Mac OS X Install DVD 1. Now grab uTorrent.exe, run WineHelper (from the Darwine folder you have just installed), and open uTorrent.exe. If everything goes smoothly, you should be seeing uTorrent client running in your desktop. There are a few problems with fonts, a some times it looks like uTorrent is “freezed”, but in fact you only have to click show/hide from uTorrent‘s tray icon, and it will come back alive and kicking!

I keep hoping that uTorrent gets ported do Mac OS X, so I can run it native, but for now this is good enough for me!

Enjoy this one, and post your feedback.