Posted by Florian Wardell | 0 comments
Mac app: Transmit 4
Today, one of my favorite Mac apps graduated to version 4.0, and it’s absolutely awesome. Transmit 4.0 is the best FTP client I’ve seen on any platform, and the developer studio behind it, Panic, deservedly uses the motto “shockingly good Mac software” to promote it. Transmit is the Swiss army knife any web developer or power user should own: the best just got better.
Some of you might wonder what a FTP is and what Transmit has to do with it. Well, FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol. As the name suggests, FTP is used to transfer files between computers on a network. You can use FTP to exchange files between computer accounts, transfer files between an account and a desktop computer, or access online software archives. More importantly, FTP is the primary way of uploading and modifying files on a server. For instance, once I finished creating TechHaze, I uploaded all its files onto a server (which you access trough your browser) with the help of an FTP client (Transmit 3, in this case). Interested? Here is our review:
The user interface
Whether you like it or not, the UI is the first thing you’ll notice in a new app. It’s a good thing that first impressions are important, because Transmit’s new interface is absolutely gorgeous. Panic is well know for their sleek UIs – some elements of Coda, one of their other apps, have been implemented in Snow Leopard by Apple, which says a lot – but this time they’ve really outdone themselves. Believe me, I spent a while trying to find something negative to say about the design, but I honestly can’t find anything. The buttons, the shadows, the gradients, the icons, every little detail is gorgeous, every pixel is where it should be. I’ve tried resizing the window, something that usually throws the design equilibrium of an app out of whack, but the user interface is just too good. Screen real estate is fully used, there’s information everywhere, but it’s still very readable and balanced. It’s not eye candy for the sake of beautiful pixels – well, a little – but for the sake of interactivity and usability: you’ll quickly notice that everything in this app has a function.
The workflow
The best user interface is useless if the workflow isn’t any good. The beauty of Transmit is that workflow and UI are so closely linked that the UI’s sleekness is reflected in the way you use the app.
For instance, favorites and bookmarks are nothing new in FTP clients, but there’s something about Transmit 4 that just makes you want to keep everything organized and tidy. It keeps iDisk locations, bonjour locations, automatically catalogs your history, and has folders for bookmarks. You can either rapidly add bookmarks right from the favorites screen, or add them as and when you’re connected to your servers. These favorites will even automatically sync over MobileMe, keeping Transmit on all your Macs updated with the same data.
Once you’re connected to your server, you can get to work, and nothing will distract you from your task. The right pane shows you local files, and the left pane shows your remote documents on the server. Tab bars on top of both panes indicate your current folder in each location. Click the little toggle switch and it immediately switches the view to a remote or local location in either pane, making the UI extremely versatile. You can even be browsing two different FTP locations and transfer files to and from them without having to bring them down to a local folder, thanks to Transmit’s user transparent temp folder. Beautiful. Transmit 4 allows you to connect to FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, and WebDAV servers.
The new features
- Sync is a great addition to Transmit. You choose which direction of the synchronization flow and run through easy to understand settings like whether you want to delete orphaned destination files, how to determine if a file has changed, among others. At the bottom, Transmit will display a beautiful speech bubble, reading out in layman’s words what’s going to happen to your files once you do synchronize. If you want to be extra cautious, you can even simulate the sync.
- Disk mounting allows you to mount a server location on your computer’s desktop. This basically means that you can browse your server just as if it were a hard drive on your computer, even after quitting Transmit!
- Places are basically shortcuts to different folders within the same FTP location. This is really handy of you host more than one website on your server or use sandboxes. Add to this the ability to use both panes for the same FTP location, and it’s usability heaven.
- And much, much more: It’s been a long 5 years since Transmit 3 came out, and Panic has packed this release with new features. At its core, Transmit is now 64-bit. Panic also says that they’ve rewritten and fine tuned the FTP engine to make it scream, and trust me, it feels just crazy fast. Uploading, on my 2000 kb/s connection, is about 6x times faster than on Transmit 3 or any other FTP client. There’s also many more view options, including the famed Cover Flow and Quick Look support. And, if you choose to do so, you have have folders show up above files in a list. Last but not least, there’s a throttler, which was one of the big drawbacks of Transmit 3.
Verdict
This software is beautiful, polished, useful, oh, and did I mention beautiful? It’s also very stable. I haven’t had a single crash with the beta, and the 4.0 version is just as smooth-running. Transmit is the best FTP client in the world, all platforms included. I mean, what other FTP client do you know that gets people exited? I am quite sure some people will get themselves a website just to try that baby out. This kind of software is quite unique to the Mac platform: Transmit has a style that would just not be present if it had been created by a vast open source community or large developer studio belonging to Microsoft. No, there are only a handful of developers behind this app, and they have a recognizable feel for aesthetics and usability. Trust me, once you’ve used a Panic app, you’ll recognize a Panic app.
It’s also this kind of software that will ensure that I will never look back to Linux or Windows. Mac apps have something about them; I don’t know if it’s the way they are designed and polished till they shine, but even Transmit’s website is a little gem of webdesign.
Take Billings, Tweetie, AppZapper, Bodega, DaisyDisk… These apps are genuinely good, and they will stand the test of time. Transmit, after all, has been around since OS9, on which it ran under the name of “Transit”.
All right, enough about this app, let me find something to review that I can actually criticize!
Transmit costs $34 for a single user license, and it’s $19 for upgrades.
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