Acquisition: The iTunes of Peer To Peer

Acquisition is a peer-to-peer file sharing application that is designed to be as familiar as possible and as easy to use as it can get. Fast, clean and so very OS X in every way, this application is one of the better P2P clients out there.

What is it good for?
Acquisition is ideal for use with the Gnutella network, which is widely spread over all platforms and is hugely popular. And because of the way that the Gnutella network is organized, there is no main server than can drop, be closed or drop off. When you establish a connection to another user, by searching or having them search you, you automatically become connected to the people they were connected to, and they to you.

This sort of infectious connection spreads fast, and because of the cross-platform nature and widespread use of this network, you become connected to millions of users in just a few minutes. And the more time you spend connected, the more you will meet.

Another protocol supported by Acquisition is BitTorrent. That's right, you can open torrent files and download them with this program. This is great since many Mac Torrent clients pale when compared with their Windows counterparts. This way you have one great application that does everything.

iTunes... iAcquisition
If there is one thing that can be said about Acquisition is that is very iTunes. From the browse mode like way of displaying search results according to type of file, artist and album, to the way the searches are kept in the left drawer like playlists, this program is one big iTunes clone.

And it's not all about looks... Acquisition is fully integrated with iTunes. When you do a search, if any of the results are already in your Library, it will be indicated with a little iTunes logo, so you don't double download, and don't have to look around to compare what you have and what they have.

If you do download a song, it can be automatically imported and played in iTunes, or added to the party shuffle so you can listen to it when your current song finishes. And if that download is not yet complete, but you want to check it, you can preview it, and Acquisition will automatically pause iTunes before it starts playing the preview, and then turns it back up when it is done.

In the mood for something new? Acquisition lets you search for similar artists, right from withing the program. It's not a bogus search, and returns pretty much the same results you would get if you did a similar search on allmusic or some similar service. Once you found a similar artist that looks interesting, you can search in Acquisition for them, or use Google and Google Images or even the Music Store or Amazon. Great for exploring.

More than just a pretty window
Acquisition offers advanced tools to give control of your peer-to-peer experience. The junk filters serve to do away with the useless PC only files like .exe, .dll and others. Also, the program filters the known junk file spammers and offers a configurable blacklist. Furthermore, you can opt to keep things tasteful by making use of the built in 'adult' content filter.

The program also uses advanced swarming algorithms in order to maximize your speed and minimize your download time. In order to share bandwidth, it also lets you limit transfer rate and number of simultaneous transfers.

The Good
Powerful and pleasant to work with. The superb iTunes integration and the similar interface makes this the clear choice if you are very music orientated.

The Bad
It is perhaps a little too music orientated, and if you are looking for other things it doesn't really turn up as many results as other similar programs.

The Truth
The best program for peer-to-peer music... perfect in every way. But if you are into the market for other things, this might not be for you.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: