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The popular Mac file transfer software [Interarchy][1] has been updated to version 8.5. Interarchy also has a new owner. Formerly Interarchy was developed by Peter N Lewis's Stairways Software, but Matthew Drayton (a long time Stairways employee) has acquired the rights and is releasing Interarchy through his new company Nolobe. John Gruber has [a nice interview][2] with both men about the transition.
Version 8.5 of Interarchy adds some nice new features including an "Open in Terminal" command which allows you to jump from an Interarchy browsing window straight over to an SSH tunnel in the same directory.
Other new features include:
* Improved Get Info window:
* A new Scripts menu
* A new Dock menu with the following commands: Connect to Server, Bookmarks, Bonjour, History and Scripts
* You can now chain file converters together. For example you could chain the Backup and gzip converters ("Backup, gzip") to have your uploaded files encoded using Backup and then compressed using gzip.
* Can now drag & drop a file/folder from a listing window onto a list bookmark in the Bookmarks window.
There have also been numerous bug fixes and other enhancements. The last time I used Interarchy it was at version 6 and when [Transmit][3] came on the market with a split pane view of local and remote files it seduced me away from Interarchy. But I've been playing around with Interarchy for a few hours now and I'm impressed.
There's still no split view windows, but the fact that Interarchy more or less mirrors the functionality and behavior of Apple's Finder app makes it really easy to use and the "Open in Terminal command is brilliant, especially if you happen to be working with a framework like Django which has a lot of command line tools.
Interarchy is by far the fastest FTP program I've ever used. The interface response is almost instantaneous and transfer rates are faster than those of Transmit and [Cyberduck][4], which I also use. Interarchy also sports tabbed windows, making it easy to have a number of directories open at the same time.
What makes Interarchy stand out from it's peers is the plethora of extra tools it includes like full network monitor tools, DNs lookups, port scans, pings and more. Imagine most of OS X's NetInfo program rolled into your FTP client with a few more tools thrown in for good measure and that's the power of Interarchy.
Although Interarchy has a number of things to recommend it, I also have a few gripes. Most of Interarchy's features mirror the Finder, but it skips the search box in the toolbar, which is a shame since large directory listings often cry out for some sort of filtering. Also Interarchy's default action for double clicking files is to download them, which seems counter intuitive, generally double clicking means you want to open the file. It's possible to change the behavior of the double click but you'll have to do it separately for each type of file.
Gripes aside, if Interarchy added a double pane browser that let me dig into remote and local directories in the same window, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Depending on your needs and habits, Interarchy just might be the FTP app you've been looking for.
Interarchy 8.5 costs $60, existing users can upgrade for $30.
[1]: http://nolobe.com/interarchy/ "Interarchy"
[2]: http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/interarchy_interview "Interarchy Interview: Peter N Lewis and Matthew Drayton"
[3]: http://www.panic.com/transmit/ "Panic Software: Transmit"
[4]: http://cyberduck.ch/ "Cyberduck"
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