Transmit 4 vs. ExpanDrive for locally mounting remote filesystem via ssh.

The verdict: Transmit 4 is better.

Ability to access and edit files on remote Linux servers locally on a mac is a big help for everyone doing any kind of server development (and who isn’t those days?).

Despite many hours spent learning emacs, it still annoys me a lot. vi terrifies me. I would much rather use TextMate to edit files and it’s possible if I mount a remote file system via ssh and make it look as local hard-drive to Mac OS, making it posible to use any Mac application to work on those files.

For that, I’ve been using ExpanDrive for a long time. Recently I’ve tried Transmit 4. They both work well but Transmit 4 works better.

One difference is lack of delay in TextMate when switching to its window. With ExpanDrive it was noticeable and with Transmit 4 the delay gone. I’m guessing Transmit does a better job at caching file metadata that TextMate accesses.

On top of that Transmit is cheaper ($34 vs. $40) and also has a very polished file management UI. It’s a good piece of software.