I earlier blogged about Transmission closing the gap between its features and those of uTorrent’s. The only problem being that one was solely a Mac application and the other a Windows application.
While that is true, it doesn’t mean that uTorrent can’t run on a Mac. I’m not talking about using Bootcamp or Parallels either. 
Crossover is a beautiful piece of software which allows you to run native windows .exe applications on Mac.
CrossOver Mac allows you to install many popular Windows applications and games on your Intel OS X Mac. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing Windows software simple and fast. Once installed, your application integrates seamlessly in OS X. Just click and run your application directly from the OS X Finder. Clicking a Windows file or document — including email attachments — will launch the appropriate Windows program, allowing you to work on the files. Best of all, you do it all easily and affordably, without needing a Microsoft operating system license.
Adding new Windows software is easy. Just place your install CD in your Intel Mac, and CrossOver will recognize it and offer to begin the installation process. CrossOver then completes the installation and configures your application to run on your Mac. That’s all there is to it.
While you’re waiting for uTorrent Mac to come out of beta, you can load it up using Crossover by simply double clicking on it like you would do to any mac.app file.
Beautiful, uTorrent running on Mac!
This method does works, but it’s not without its issues.
Finder doesn’t integrate with uTorrent under Crossover but you do get a ‘windowsy’ file navigator to work with. The navigator names your local Documents Finder folder as ‘My Documents’. This is the most feasible location in which to store your downloaded torrent files.
Each time you double click on uTorrent.exe, it goes through the installation process. But that process is hardly an issue as uTorrent is approximately 300kb in size. You’re asked whether or not you wish to add shortcuts to your desktop and start up menu, just untick these options and uTorrent should load up fairly instantly.
Running uTorrent via Crossover on the Mac might not be the most ideal scenario but if you aren’t happy with any of the native Mac torrent applications, such as Transmission or Tomato, then you’re going to have to bide your time until uTorrent comes out of closed beta for the Mac.
The only other application I have attempted to install using Crossover was the Google Talk client. The application successfully installed but it didn’t run properly as it failed the authentication process when sending my login credentials. This is more of a security feature on Google’s side (disallowing unauthorized clients to login to the system) than a feature issue on Crossover’s side.
Crossover is available as a 30 day full trial and costs $59.95 for the full license.
Why not check it to see if you can get your favorite Windows apps running on Mac? I’m not sure if they each will work, but that’s what the trial is for.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:38 am
[...] application for Mac called Crossover which can run ’some’ windows apps under OS X. I blogged about running uTorrent (Windows only App) on Mac OS X under Crossover recently. It’s a handy alternative to running Parallels or booting into XP/Vista if you need to run [...]
August 20th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
[...] When I first found Crossover, I attempted to run and install the Windows application; Google Talk. Crossover didn’t install the application correctly but nor did Darwine. I assume it’s due to an authentication feature on Google Talk to prevent a cloaking of the user agent or something like that. [...]
November 4th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
It works and is fast, but lots of cpu resources it needs.