The Case Of The Disappearing Mac FTP Utility

Large hard drives are an indispensable part of my Mac life. I collect stuff. Music, photos, movies, files, documents, utilities, applications, do-dads that don’t do anymore.

Seriously, I have some utilities which go back to Mac classic days and won’t even run on Intel Macs but I don’t throw them away because, you know, one day I might need it. Anyone need a copy of Internet Explorer for Mac?

One of those Mac files that I collect but seldom use are FTP utilities. For the uninitiated who don’t worry about transferring a file beyond downloading in Safari or sending in Mail, FTP is the internet’s “file transfer protocol.” It’s an antiquated but still useful way of downloading or uploading files to a server.

I once used FTP all the time uploading files to the company’s server, downloading other files, whatever they were—Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, music, videos.

Through the years I’ve tried out nearly every FTP application available to Mac users, from Anarchy to Fetch to Captain FTP to CyberDuck and many others more forgettable.

These days I don’t use FTP as much but still keep a copy of Panic’s Transmit (easy) and YummyFTP (blazing fast).

Imagine my surprise when I got an email asking me to upgrade to the latest version of Vicomsoft’s FTP Client for Mac OS X. That was a blast from the past. Distant past.

So, I checked my serial number utility, and, nope, nothing in it from Vicomsoft. I checked Mail, and found a receipt and serial number from 2003, a full six years ago. Whew. In internet years that’s positively ancient.

Vicomsoft’s new FTP Client for Mac users looks pretty much like every other FTP utility for Mac users, except with a different icon. The new version has more features, of course, one of which is speed.

It claims to be the “fastest at FTP transfer ever, leaving all other rival FTP software in its wake.” Oh boy. I love benchmarks. Sadly, there was no comparison to YummyFTP, which is my favored FTP Speed King™.

Still, there are some features worth noting in FTP Client for Mac OS X. Growl. Auto re-connect and resume, unicode support, very large file transfers, and, my favorite, and not found in many other FTP utilities, server to server FTP transfers.

In my simple tests FTP Client was about the same speed at uploading and downloading a file as YummyFTP, both of which are much faster than Transmit.

One thing missing, or, I couldn’t find it, was the ability to access Amazon S3 accounts, also not in YummyFTP, but available in Transmit, which is another reason for keeping it around.

So, why am I not jumping up and down over the prospect of yet another Mac utility to make my uploading and downloading life even better? A few years ago I was asked to pay more money for an upgrade to FTP Client and I refused.

After all, it’s just an FTP client. Some are free. The new features didn’t look all that new. Here were are, many years later, and Vicomsoft wants another $15 for the latest version. It’s tempting, but not enough.

After all, including the free CyberDuck, I have three FTP utilities. How many do I need?