vigilsaidthis

Bought version 3 in the recent MUPromo bundle, and am kind of regretting my purchase. I had trialled it a few months ago, but didn't give it a proper shakedown in CPU/graphics-intensive applications, and the performance on my 2.2ghz macbook turns out to be quite poor for most of the things I'd actually want to do with it (games, graphics apps, file-processing utilities). Windows itself behaves sluggishly, using both recommended and maximum memory settings - even dragging an explorer window around has noticeable redraw lag.

There's also significant problems using non-US Macbook keyboards with it. Parallels represents the keyboard to windows as a standard 101-key windows keyboard - but the layout of special characters (e.g. \, |, ", {}) can be very different on the Macbook keyboard. There seems to be no way to tell Windows to use a more appropriate keyboard driver either, as the bootcamp drivers don't match the phony hardware that Parallels presents to the VM. So you'd better have a really good memory of where the special characters are on a full-size 101-key keyboard in your chosen language.

There's quite a few interface niggles too. Parallels can't seem to figure out whether it's a windows app or a mac app - there's egregious OK/Cancel buttons in every dialog, and they even swap positions from window to window. You can't view the configuration settings of a VM without suspending it - and then actually viewing them will automatically shut down the VM from suspend mode, even if you don't modify any settings. Parallels will also let you allocate more memory to a VM than the total memory allocation limit, then refuse to start the VM until you change the total memory limit too. Who wrote a warning dialog for that without it occuring to them to warn the user sooner or just take care of it automatically? Meanwhile, there's a preferences pane for what type of animation to use for full-screen transitions, and even what speed to play the animation at.
For a Mac-only app that's up to version 3, I expected these kind of obvious design errors to have been fixed - it feels like nobody read the HIG.

I also trialled VMWare Fusion a while ago and, while it shares much of the same UI clunkiness, the performance was better in Windows itself and the configuration interface was at least less obstructive. I am looking forward to parallels 4, which I hope will bring better performance and a more mac-like UI sensibility. If it doesn't, then VMWare for me.

Parallels performs well with Windows XP on my new Apple Air. I have tried Fusion but that was confuding for me to switch my windows machine to mac and the only solution was Transporter from Parallels. Also Parallels represent a great integration between OSX and Windows, so I really enjoy it.
As for VMware I can say that their performance on Vista is a bit higher but lack of compatibility and features for me sound bad.
So, I'd stay with Parallels.

I use Colloquy every day and by and large I'm happy with it - the core interface is clean and intuitive, it gets the Cocoa feel right, and eschews a lot of the unnecessary features that get in the way with other IRC clients. But there hasn't been a single update in the 5 months I've been using it despite frequent and irritating known bugs: such as the crashers other users have mentioned and a particularly annoying one that makes channel windows appear to be completely empty until you type "/reload style" or rejoin the channel.

Besides the bugs, many parts of the app are still undercooked. The default style has a distracting fixed background image, and removing it is complicated by bugs in the style modification window (not to mention that removing it seems to trigger the aforementioned empty-window bug). The transfers window gives little control over transfers - if a transfer hangs (which happens a lot due to the pickiness of DCC), it's difficult to cancel it and it can interfere with retransfer attempts. Selecting and copying text from IRC into other applications is fiddly: Colloquy will often ignore or screw up selection attempts unless you have careful aim, and it will paste usernames as Colloquy-only links broken across several lines unless pains are taken to paste without formatting. The peripheral parts of the interface are a bit of a ghetto - the buddy list appears to have no way to remove buddies (or indeed much use at all), the connection window is obscure to find and use when you need it, the menus have options for controlling the drawer even though the drawer interface mode is disabled by default. And so on.

All of these are nitpicks, but they're things that irritate me daily. I want to continue using Colloquy and have donated, but if there's no sign of active development I will eventually move to Linkinus or another maintained client - despite the core experience being less elegant.

Personally I really dislike the Colloquy UI.

I've used Photoshop for Windows professionally in all its versions since 5.0. Moving to the mac, I was looking forward to finally using the app on it's 'home turf'. But somehow they have managed to make Photoshop even less pleasant to install, configure and use on Leopard than it was on Windows. That's got to be some kind of engineering miracle.

Leaving aside the myriad interface woes, which there is not enough time in the day to describe, what galls me most about Photoshop CS3 on the mac is how un-neighbourly it is. After installation I found my Applications folder cluttered with Adobe subfolders, one for each component of the application - including several I hadn't agreed to install (Adobe Bridge, anyone? Adobe Device Central? Adobe Stock Photos? "Adobe Help Viewer 1.1", an application I am never going to run separately in my life?) Each of these folders was full to the brim with licensing agreements I'd already agreed to, and support files that should be living in /Library/Application Support/. None of these folders or applications can be renamed or moved after installation, otherwise the applications stop working. None of these components can be uninstalled without uninstalling the whole application - and you cannot even start the uninstaller without closing all your browsers first. This same casual, careless contempt for the user and their system extends to the design of the entire application.

After 7 years, trying it on the mac was the last straw; I have come to thoroughly resent this application and Adobe's attitude to software design. I'm frantically exploring alternatives because I do not want to be beholden to Photoshop for another minute of my professional life.

The only way Photoshop will get measurably better, faster or more pleasant to use is if they start again with a clean sheet of paper. I'm not holding my breath.

I'd love to avoid it but the competition is far behind !

A killer app for torrents that manages to beat uTorrent in simplicity and usability. Highly recommended!

I used Transmission a few years ago, and I didn't like it. It has come on very strongly since then, and it's now the main torrent app I use on the Mac.

http://www.macpatrol.eu/gold/transmission

Finally transmission gets back to being good!

Lightyears ahead of Azureus in terms of taking up less computer power and maintaining connections. Torrents download significantly faster with it as well. 5/5 stars.

better than µtorrent, and it really looks great too

Nice app.
I love it.

Transmission is fatastic!! I have a firewalled internet connection but it works perfectly! :)

Absolutely easy and transparent. ****

Each new build is better than the prior. The collapsible label stacks are great for those who are very particular about torrent organization.

Transmission has completely recovered from the 0.9x wobbles, and recent versions are really excellent.

great torrent-client. the only client that is better is utorrent for windows

Now with preliminary Proxy-to-tracker support (does NOT use proxy for peer-to-peer communication, only to tracker) in nightly builds (as of 1.22+) (http, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 support).
Also, there is now a blocklist in the shipping builds (but it must be updated manually).

Transmission just keeps getting better.

Awesome. The best BitTorrent application for the Mac by far.

Hard to believe it's a cross-platform app.

Still missing DHT... DHT = faster downloads. Sometimes I prefer to use uTorrent on CrossOver :)