Ducks to Trucks, or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Spending $30 on an FTP Client

As I've been blogging recently, I've been in a state of flux when it comes to my FTP client. And when I posted "Dogs to Ducks", I had pretty much hung my hat on the coatrack that is Cyberduck, a great open source FTP client for the Mac.

But then something developery happened: I filed a support ticket for the developer to include what is standard OS behavior in his app. It's standard on both the Mac and Windows, in fact. But he said no, because he didn't like it.

Now, I can respect that to a degree and ultimately chose to do just that. I'm not an application developer (well, not since the early 90s and RAMGauge for Windows) and can understand wanting to balance one's own needs/wants versus the audience's. I certainly could have pressed the issue, and could have hounded this guy and had it done.

Or, I could have just chosen another app - which I did. I chose Transmit.

In my first post on FTP clients I noted that I'd rather spend $30 on shoes. This remains true. But if I liken Transmit to a pair of shoes, it's like Birkenstocks: in it for the long haul, designed to last.

My new-found love for Transmit came through when I was working on the Daily Ping rebuild last weekend. I was sitting there moving files between remote directories - fairly monotonous. I thought to myself, "Gee, I wish this thing had tabs!" So I pressed Command-T almost in a joking fashion and, sure enough, a tab opened. Fantastic! And I was able to drag and drop between tabs, too! Just as I should!

Best of all, it supports the standard rename method: click a name, wait a beat, type the new name. That's how it should be.

Transmit also passes the test that Fetch failed in that I can edit files remotely and not suffer some weird side effects in its window. Apparently it can even edit images (or anything) remotely - I have yet to use this. In fact there are a lot of things I have yet to use in Transmit.

It Just Works

Moreso, Transmit feels like a natural part of the OS. I mean this in a good way. The interface is Aqua and carefully constructed. There are the little touches one should expect from a Mac app; for instance when opening a second tab for the first time, it doesn't just blotchily pop up -  the entire tab bar slides down into view from beneath the toolbar.

It also uses drawers smartly (there are about 2 such applications), and unlike older versions of Cyberduck, doesn't employ crazy multiple drawers.

It adds a status icon to its Dock icon to tell you what's going on. Its Favorites integrate delightfully with QuickSilver. And, it even supports SOCKS. Which is appropriate given I compared it to a shoe earlier.

One more thing that won me over was Transmit's Dashboard widget. I don't use widgets, but anyone who makes a little truck drive down a highway (with bumps and all!) whilst uploading a file deserves my hard-earned cash.

Summary

Fetch made me growl. Cyberduck made me smile. Transmit makes me happy. It's a great application, and my thanks to the folks at Panic for making it. Keep up the great work.