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by Eliah Hecht 
Apr 22nd 2009 at 11:00AM
Curse Client for Mac has been a long time in the making. With the 3.0 version that came out recently, they finally have a client that appears to run (on Intel/10.5 Macs, anyway), even if it does display a wxWidgets error upon first launch (which can safely be ignored). I've been using it to manage my addons for the past week in order to bring an informed review, so here goes.
The first thing you notice about Curse Client is that it just doesn't look like a Mac app. It's got these weird tabs up top with icons in them, the main icons for initiating events are unfamiliar and un-Mac-like, and it summons odd progress bars that float on top of all your other windows in the lower-right-hand corner (odd progress bar depicted at right).
However, if you can get over all that, it actually works quite well for keeping your addons up-to-date. It scans my directory of about 100 addons pretty quickly and fetches information on any release-quality upgrades (or whatever level of upgrading you set as your preference) that are available, downloads and installs them efficiently, and lets me get on with my playing.
Another feature I find convenient is the ability to handle "install via Curse Client" web links. Being able to install a mod with one click from a web site is nice, especially for an addon junkie like me. This feature does not appear to work if you click a link while Curse Client is not open. It does launch the client, but the addon never downloads and installs (despite the presence of a progress bar).
On the other hand, there are still some things about Curse Client that do not please me. Foremost is its unnecessary invasiveness. I don't want an icon in my menu bar whenever I have the program open (at right), and I don't want Curse Client to start up every time I log in; I just want to update my addons every so often. I can change the start-at-login behavior from the preferences, but the default (to start at login) is wrong. There isn't any way to remove the useless menu bar icon that I know of.
I'm also told that the Windows client by default installs an addon that mines your data and uploads it to Curse, which is unacceptable behavior, but this isn't the Windows review, so I'm not going to say any more on that point.
The icons, which seem to be the primary interface for most actions in the client (checking for updates, installing addons, removing addons), are less than intuitive, and are certainly non-standard. I would like to see more standard Mac OS interface elements in a future version. And what's with swoopy-arrow meaning "update all addons"? I'd like to see multiple overlapping arrows, or something like that.
There is one big functionality issue. For a substantial minority of mods, even if they're on the Curse site, they turn up as "unidentified" and have to be re-installed via Curse Client before you can update them automatically. I don't know what the deal is with that. And of course mods that aren't on Curse don't show up in the client, but there's not much to be done about that.
So, Curse coders: if you can fix the non-sensible defaults, get rid of the menu bar icon, improve the icons, solve that wxWidgets error, stop cluttering up my screen with progress bars that should be in the main window, and figure out why some addons aren't being detected, you'll have a great client on your hands. Until then, it does the job, and that's really what matters.
Download Curse Client at Curse
Filed under: Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
Aigarius Apr 22nd 2009 12:13PM
The Windows version started working in Linux under Wine in recent versions.
Phaed Apr 22nd 2009 3:43PM
I'd love to switch back to Linux for WoW... could never get WotLK installed because I couldn't click to accept their ToS though. : /
Gnosh Apr 22nd 2009 11:22AM
It's a port, guys. They weren't trying to write iCurse.
"the Windows client by default installs an addon that mines your data and uploads it to Curse, which is unacceptable behavior"
Speaking of unacceptable behavior, can you possibly explain why iTunes on PC keeps trying to ninja-install Safari (shit) and Bonjour (shit) every time it updates?
NGP Apr 22nd 2009 11:29AM
Taking a page from the Windows book I suppose
Surothog Apr 22nd 2009 11:29AM
I could.
Bonjour is a service that allows discovery of like services on the local network. It's what allows iTunes to automatically discover other shared libraries on your LAN. For a family with many computers sharing a music database, it's quite helpful. As it's a base component of a primary iTunes feature, it gets installed.
Safari is a browser. Accessing the iTunes store is done via browser interface. While you may never use the Safari installation, I believe iTunes uses those core components regularly for displaying information and referencing URL's for various media resources. As a base component of a primary iTunes feature, it's core components are installed.
Having had all those installed anyway, Apple by default installs the whole thing. This simplifies packaging and managing the whole thing from their end, as 98% of Safari is needed, so they may as well just package all of it, giving them one thing to patch, with one set of possible security holes.
Ted Apr 22nd 2009 11:50AM
Bonjour is marginally useful; Apple definitely taking a MS tack on that. Safari is BS and should be scourged from the face of the earth. The apple update manager, and quicktime's stickiness to your startup app list also can bite me. iTunes has gotten more bloated than Elvis at the end of his life.
Beyond that complaining about the Curse thing automatically starting on boot is not a big deal; that's why there is a preferences pane after all.
SmokeTheBear Apr 22nd 2009 12:23PM
Besides that, describing it as "mining your information and uploading it to Curse" is misleading. That makes it sound like it's pulling your personal information or e-mail address or something and sending it off to some nefarious marketing people for evil purposes, when all it is is a character profiler addon that uploads your character (when enabled) to WoWDB, so your WoWDB profile (which is your Curse profile -- they share a login) has your characters attached to it, and so you can see personalized previews and whatnot.
VSUReaper Apr 22nd 2009 12:46PM
@Smoke the bear
While your right about the comment saying that it sounds like its trying to steal our identity it does more than update your character profile, it records the items that you gather (mines, herbs, drop rates) for their database (WOWDB??) and I think it has uninstalled my WOWhead addon that uploads to them.
I'm not 100% sure about the uninstalling the wowhead addon, but I noticed yesterday that it was no longer on my quicklaunch bar. I will be double checking that when I get home tonight. If it has, you better believe I'm posting here about it, and filing complaints with curse.
skisulli Apr 22nd 2009 12:56PM
Safari is a pretty good browser. If any browser needs to die, its IE, and its non-standards compliant BS. If IE did not exist, then my life as a web developer would be so much better.
Alex P Apr 22nd 2009 11:24AM
Also, have you seen what happens if you right click an addon, open the changelog, and then press Cmd+W to close the window...
Curse Client = Fail.
Gnosh Apr 22nd 2009 11:26AM
I can go out and buy a $2,000 computer and install Curse on it, or you can tell me what happens when you do that
Alex P Apr 22nd 2009 11:32AM
Most Macs are way less than that, mine sure was.
And what happens is that it closes the main window, the one behind the changelog, rather than closing the changelog window as you'd expect. (Cmd+W is the close window shortcut on Macs by the way)
Shulkman Apr 22nd 2009 11:26AM
It's too bad that the guys at curse aren't as gifted as the folks at wowmatrix, who actually made a client that works on both pc's and mac's, without errors. I don't care about the leech argument. I want something that works, and works right.
dv0rak Apr 22nd 2009 11:32AM
Do I need to make an account on their stupid website to use this? Yes? Game over. Deleted.
This is just a recording-industry style attempt to use obfuscation and DRM to grab my eyeballs and line their pocketbooks.
Now that wowmatrix is hosting addons on their servers, I hope they stage a comeback. I'll be using/donating to the addons that wowmatrix can download. Curse and WoWUI will get zero, and I won't be using addons that are only available there.
Remember when developing and distributing addons was about fun and supporting the game, and not about trying to monetize our eyeballs?
rosencratz Apr 22nd 2009 12:13PM
Here! here!
AyaJulia Apr 22nd 2009 1:16PM
"This is just a recording-industry style attempt to use obfuscation and DRM to grab my eyeballs and line their pocketbooks."
...What? Put away the tinfoil hat, kid. Curse.com accounts are free, and despite what it says about the auto-updating being a "premium feature," I've used mine for something like 8 months without having to pay for this feature.
dv0rak Apr 22nd 2009 1:32PM
@ayajulia
This is all about driving eyeballs to their website and using my email address to try and upsell their paid service in the future. Otherwise, I wouldn't have to create an account to use the updater.
I'll support addons that I can download and donate to anonymously.
niko Apr 22nd 2009 1:47PM
hey Aya, if you read the first-time launch of the Curse updater, it mentions that it's giving you Premium access by default for now, but they are planning on making parts of the updater for-pay in the near future, i.e., lining their pockets.
Having to log in for an addon updater is really, really, low IMO. There's no need for it.... even more so to find people that would pay real money for auto-updating features.
cnome Apr 22nd 2009 6:13PM
@ "find people that would pay real money for auto-updating features." - i had 170 addons and use more than one machine. I would spend a bit of RW money to save time.
Naturally, for many very obvious reasons, I would never ever do that for curse.
Hone Melgren Apr 23rd 2009 8:05AM
@ dv0rak
The move to block wowmatrix's traffic had little to do with driving people to pay for their addons.
It had more to do with staying alive. Wow matrix's scrapping was killing the servers. Arrowmaster of the wowace community managed to get a hold of the source code for the program. It doesn't have a list of URLs to download. It has a list of addon webpages from which it loads the page several times in order to get the download link.
30-50% of 1.3-1.8 TB/hour worth of data was the traffic coming from the wow matrix clients. They had to plug that so they could spend the money they were paying on that traffic for other things.
Servers don't run on sunshine and rainbows you know. Advertising and site impressions were what was paying for the site.