Stuffit Compresses Everything But Politicians.

I’ve used Stuffit for longer than I’ve had bad hair days. Stuffit Expander 11 just shipped, but I couldn’t find the free version.

Allume Systems, the company that bought Stuffit, has a history of problems delivering their goods so I stopped upgrading back at version 8.x.

SmithMicro, the company that bought Allume has, in my opinion, always had problems delivering software that worked.

So what happened to Stuffit Expander 11? Did it ship or not? I can’t tell. The download link never worked.

Sorry, it’s early in the just-announced-a-new-product process, and the internet is a series of pipes, and they get crowded when everyone wants to download something.

Should you go with the new Stuffit?

Well, that’s what I asked myself. Since disk images are pretty much standard on most Mac software, and zip is built in to Mac OS X, what’s the need for Stuffit?

I’m still asking myself that question.

My new Zip process using the Mac’s zip and disk images is less expensive than upgrading to the latest version of Stuffit which I couldn’t download because the internet pipes were too crowded.

Thanks to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens for technophrases that are free and priceless.

To be fair, Stuffit comes with oodles of features. Honestly, you’d think Microsoft bought the company.

Stuffit compresses and decompresses nearly everything except a can of Jolt Cola or a politicians speech.

There’s Zip, .sitX, .sit, .bin, .exe, .gz, .cab, .sea, .hqz, .rar, .tgz, and more and more.

For Mac OS (the non-OS X version of the Mac’s venerable software), there’s a need, as many files have been compressed and saved.

Stuffit unstuffs those compressed files.

Stuffit Standard Expander is free. That’s what you use to unstuff, uncompress, most files.

For the rest of the versions, Stuffit, Allume, Smith Micro, et al, wants you to pay something. You know, it’s that whole capitalistic profit thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in favor of profit. After all, I’m an Apple owner. I know about paying a company their just rewards, uh, profits.

The latest version of Stuffit is a grab bag of features, a petry dish of active feature bacteria, some deadly, some anti-biotic in nature (they’re good for you), and some are just there to fill up bullet points on a slide show in a marketing presentation.

Stuffit works with Mac and Windows these days. It encrypts, it expands, it shrinks, it lets you look at shrunk files before they’re de-shrunked.

You can add passwords to archives, burn shrunk archives onto CDs, add, delete, even change files in archives that have already been archived.

Stuffit lets you FTP or email files, send files to your .Mac account, and perform backups.

Yes, Virginia, there are backups in Stuffit. Surprised? Don’t be. Stuffit has become the Kitchen Sink™ of Compression Tools for Mac and Windows users.

I’ve bought and used Stuffit. From time to time I have a need to expand a compressed file using Stuffit Expander. That’s the free version. I like free.

Stuffit’s Archive Manager makes it easier for users to find, view, and manage archived files.

Oh, you don’t have archived files? Yes, you do.

Archive simply means any file on your Mac or PC that you want to keep and don’t want to throw away. How and where you keep the file is the challenge.

Managing those files may take time and effort. Storing them takes hard disk space, and despite the cheapness of hard drives (price, not quality) Stuffit can help, particularly if you have many files.

Some files are more valuable than others. They’re so valuable you don’t want to keep them on your hard drive as your only storage device.

Stuffit lets you burn archives to CD and DVD and copy them to other hard drives.

Entering the new age of Intel Macs, Stuffit is now fully a Universal Binary, which means it’ll run on older PPC Macs and newer Intel Macs.

Frankly, the list of features and things you can do in Stuffit is compelling. I’m tempted to buy it just because the length of features is long, and there are so many cute little red checkmarks beside each one.

How much more compelling does a product need to be?

If you really need to archive plenty of files, cross platform, and in many formats, Stuffit is it.

For me, I’m content to use Zip in OS X and disk images. I like the price.

If you assume your needs are greater than mine, then you’re out about $30 for an upgrade to Stuffit 11.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

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