It seems this new version requires the newer version of Java that is available with 10.4 and 10.5 therefore cannot work anymore with 10.3. Apple are not releasing Java updates for 10.3, even though they were still selling computers with 10.3 pre-installed only 2.5 years ago.

Azureus 3.0.4.2 works beautifully on my 1999 Windows 98 PC because it runs the latest version of Java. Thanks for nothing Apple. You've done a great job of creating the world's most incompatible and quickly outdated computer systems. When our office full of twenty five 2.5 year old mac computers is completely incapable of running recent software until we fork out thousands of dollars for upgrades (upgrades to something that isn't even broken), something is very badly wrong.

That being said, Azureus version 3.0.3.2 still runs beautifully on 10.3, so I'm very happy with it. You can't run anything above 3.0.3.2 on 10.3, so be careful if you have the program set to automatically update because it will kill your installation and you'll need to track down an old version. I haven't yet found a place where older versions are available but being a SourceForge effort I'm sure there is a mirror somewhere.

I'm completely happy with Azureus and highly recommend it, but I'm just not happy with Apple's newly acquired Microsoft marketing tactics forcing people to spend money on non-upgrade (meaning flaky updates that don't provide any additional functionality but in fact remove some functionality) every year. I expect to get flamed by the Apple fanboys here, but companies will never invest money in Apple computers if they have to budget an OS upgrade every year. If you have 200 Macs in a company, that's a heck of a lot of money to spend every year. Much cheaper to go the Windows route, plenty of businesses still run the latest software on Win98 computers without issue.