Will OSX Build In Torrenting?

Cjattwood writes "Mac OS rumors has an article describing a possible implementation of a Bittorrent client into Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", including a unique sharing reward system where the user can share bandwidth and get rewards, such as credit in the iTunes store."

Comments

Movie Store Distribution System

[richdun]

Credit for torrenting? Why would Apple give away iTunes music just for people to run torrents? Well, maybe because those torrents will serve up iTunes movies. Dedicated bandwidth has been the greatest obstacle to getting a full iTunes HD movie store (well, that and the movie companies' agreement, but if the tech is there and economical, the content will follow).

Re:Movie Store Distribution System

[rovingeyes]

"...but if the tech is there and economical, the content will follow..."

I wonder how AT&T and Verizon will try to extort money for this to happen. Are they gonna track ITunes bittorrent traffic and charge Apple for it? If they can demand money from Google, Amazon etc for their content, which is incedentally less amount of data (per request probably megs at max) than a HD movie (gigs of data per request), I don't see why these cartels wouldn't eye Apple as their next target.

Translation:

[Avillia]

Help us take our hosting cost and we'll help you negate that bill you pay for 30 tasty megabytes of fiber... Yesss...

Personally, this is the best implementation of the BitTorrent technology yet.

$eeding.

Interesting, but...

[Penguin Programmer]

This sounds like a great thing, since it would make BitTorrent more available for non-techie users and add another vote to the legitimacy of BT.

However, if there's a crediting system, does that mean that Apple is watching your BT usage? If I'm not mistaken, Apple has some interest as a content producer and may not like what they see BT being used for. Is this going to be yet another organization watching what people transfer and ratting them out to the RIAA/MPAA/CIA, or will they be Not Evil (tm) and keep their noses out of people's business?

Want to share updates

[TeamSPAM]

If we can share the software updates between macs, it would be a good thing. With 3 macs in my house, why should I have to download the updates 3 times? I should be able to get a copy from the mac on my local net that downloaded it first. I just hope they allow the torrent client to have a throttle on it.

Re:Want to share updates

[TeamSPAM]

There are 2 problems with this suggestion:

1. This works when there is only 1 software update available. This solution gets ugly when there are multiple updates to install. Doing these updates via the command line end up requiring multiple reboots, where the software update panel will only require 1 reboot if needed. I may need to review doing updates from the command line so that I can do multiple installs.
2. I'm lazy. ;-)
   In the wonderful world of Apple's "it just works", I want the pref panel for software update to have a checkbox that says cache all updates and a textbox that indicates my local update cache.