I wondered what everyone's opinion is. The best Torrent application for Mac. I use Transmission but am having a lot of issues with it.

I use Transmission myself, I've been happy with it. What trouble are you having?

I don't have an opinion on which one is the best.

I use Mainline 4.4.1 (newer ones have CPU usage issues).
I keep Vuze around for torrents with little or no seeders (DHT support).

I wonder if there's anyone reading the site who would have enough experience with different torrent apps to write a comprehensive look at all the different applications available and describe their pros and cons. Unfortunately I do not, but I know there would be a great deal of interest in an article on this topic.

Transmission hands down. I've never had a problem through the updates over the time I've been using it.

I feel they are all the same, but... Transmission?
It's free, frequently updated and gives me good speeds.

Can you guys give any assist to getting my port open without having to put my router into DmzPlus mode completely? Transmission has started this new habit of downloading for a bit then just stopping for like 5-10 minutes. I don't get it.

Take the port number from this preference setting, and make sure that port is open in your router settings with your IP address.

I know that part. My file says I have 4/5 peers. I am getting no download at all though. It's like I am being blocked or something.

I use Vuze now for years (former Azureus). it's also free, like many other torrent apps.
Look into your firewall setting in OSX for an open port, maybe also one used by iTunes, iChat or iPhoto.

You could be blocked on the transmitters end. Click the file hit CMD-I click the icon that looks like a person it will list all trackers the torrent is using you can see if you are being blocked that way. If you have the ports open that were shown in the screen shot posted or if you changed them you should be fine. If you are running Peerguardian that will close connections as well or if you are using the built in block list that will also stop connections. Hope this helps!

Historically, I've used Transmission, but after the great hard drive crash of 2008, the first torrent app that I downloaded was uTorrent (which I had been using before the crash), and I didn't bother redownloading Transmission. I'm fairly impressed that the uTorrent team did a proper port. For the most part, it doesn't look or feel like a port.

I use Transmission. It has all the features I need and a web interface so I can add things from anywhere I am. (Even my iPhone)

I have used uTorrent, Azureus/Vuze, TomatoTorrent and the official BitTorrent client before I found Transmission. I haven't felt the need to try anything else since then.