Peer-to-peer file sharing programs have catered to all the needs of the file sharing community, allowing users of Limewire, BearShare, eDonkey, and Kazaa to gain access to thousands of media files available for download without having to pay for anything. But because of the clients' PC-only nature, will applications be available for Apple users such as Kazaa for Mac?

Sharman Networks' P2P file sharing client called Kazaa has always been a Windows program since its creation in 2002. FastTrack, the Kazaa network, is the most popular P2P network being used by millions who share and swap files using the client and has remained a PC-only network ever since due to the encryption of the protocol by the owners in order to retain control of the network. Now certain Mac-oriented applications have gained access to the FastTrack network, allowing users to be able to use Kazaa for Mac.

Some applications that allow Kazaa for Mac are mlMac, which is the GUI for mldonkey made for non-expert users, Poisoned and Neo. mlMac has several features such as reliable daemon connection, a new setup assistant, added toggle buttons for searches and uploads, filter, filenames, updated GUI protocol, and much more. Poisoned uses the giFT daemon which is capable of expediting communication between the end user and the specific filesharing protocols, namely gnutella (used by Limewire clients) and FastTrack (used by Kazaa clients). The benefits of Poisoned are that it is a native Mac OSX application and does not use adware or spyware at all. Advantages from using these applications include a lot of users and files to share and download from, making Kazaa for Mac possible than ever before.

Neo is another option to be able to use Kazaa for Mac users. Neo is a shadow client, meaning it is not a real Kazaa client, which scans through IP ranges looking for hosts, indexes, and stores them locally in the hard drive of your computer. Neo uses compelling methods in order to detect and locate Kazaa hosts. Neo will scan the given user-defined IP address range and will look for computers that respond on Kazaa's port. These IP ranges are usually large and can take a lot of time to scan. When a Kazaa host is found, Neo gets a list of all the shared files, writes the information to the disk, and becomes the content that Neo searches through. Some advantages of using shadow clients like Neo are customizable scan/search range, anonymity for those accessing the Kazaa network, and possibly results in better speeds.

Though most (if not all) of these applications were created by a third party, these allow Mac users to finally gain access to the FastTrack network and are able to download and share files with other Kazaa users. These clients have their own advantages and disadvantages which might affect the performance and the file sharing security of the user, so choose wisely and know what you are getting into if you will consider using any of these applications. For the most recent version visit FreeKazaaLite.net for more info.