The Best Macintosh FTP sites

This list is purloined from a public domain listing of the best Mac FTP sites by Adam Wunn. I agree with his observations, so have printed his opinions mostly unscathed. However, I did tewak the ratings of the accessibility of these FTP sites. Many of these sites are now much more popular- -and harder to reach- -now than when Adam created his list. So it goes.

mac.archive.umich.edu. This site, located at the University of Michigan, is the world's largest Internet Macintosh FTP site. New files are added daily and a new files directory lets users easily navigate through the newest goodies. An excellent site that is well organized. Organization: Excellent; Up-to-Date: Excellent; Speed: Excellent; Ease: Excellent; Access: Fair; Variety: Excellent.
sumex-aim.stanford.edu. This site is located at Stanford University in California. You can bet this place is always hopping with the trendiest stuff around. If you want it, Sumex has it! Organization: Good; Up-to-Date: Excellent; Speed: Excellent; Ease: Excellent; Access: Poor; Variety: Excellent.
ftp.apple.com. This is Apple's Internet site. It is stuffed full of useful Apple add-ons such as Quicktime and every System Enabler. It is a great resource, if you can connect. The server is either shut down half the time or it is so overloaded, it won't even give you the time of day. Get used to spending lots of time waiting when it comes to anything associated with Apple. Organization: Good; Up-to-Date: Fair; Speed: Good; Ease: Good; Access: Horrible; Variety: Good.
ftp.funet.fi. This is a European site that mirrors Sumex-Aim, but it also has a number of original files. Organization: Excellent; Up-to-Date: Fair; Speed: Moderate; Ease: Excellent; Access: Excellent; Variety: Excellent.
ftp.lu.se. This site is GIF- and JPEG-happy. Graphics are the staple here. There are bundles of other interesting files as well. Organization: Good; Up-to-Date: Excellent; Speed: Good; Ease: Good; Access: Poor; Variety: Good.
irisa.irisa.fr. If you are interested in usenet newsgroups, this is the site for you! irisa keeps a very large archive with all of the newsgroup postings. Very handy indeed! Organization: Excellent; Up-to-Date: Excellent; Speed: Excellent; Ease: Excellent; Access: Excellent; Variety: Poor.
ux1.cso.uiuc.edu. This is a massive archive that has copies of a local user group's shareware/freeware disks. It is not updated regularly and when dowloading these disk images, one doesn't know what is on the disks. Thus, its like the mystery meat in the dinning commons of most colleges. Still, some very interesting stuff here if you have lots of extra time on your hands. Organization: Poor; Up-to-Date: Fair; Speed: Excellent; Ease: Fair Access: Good; Variety: Poor.
archie.au. This is a mirror site for Sumex-aim and Umich. Its major assest is that both heavy hitters are available at this one site. It is a little known site, but users in the U.S. need to remember that it's in Australlia- -connections can be slow, and it's bad form to suck megabytes from far away when you can get the same stuff closer to home. Organization: N/A; Up-to-Date: N/A; Speed: Excellent; Ease: Good; Access: Good; Variety: N/A.

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