Stop Microsoft

Operating Systems => macOS => Topic started by: hm_murdock on 28 December 2005, 02:16

Title: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: hm_murdock on 28 December 2005, 02:16
There was a time that Stuffit was a well-respected and liked application for Mac. It was reliable, fast, and top quality.

Well, those days are LONG GONE. Now, Stuffit's makers are the same type of people that have the "BUY NOW BUY BUY BUY NOW" sites you find that hawk poorly-compiled clones of Spybot for $29.95 plus shipping for a downloadable installer that doesn't work.

Well, for some reason, I didn't install the version of Stuffit Expander that comes with OS X 10.4. I don't know why. Stupidity? Yeah, that sounds right. So, I go and download the "free" Stuffit Expander 10. Okay, it's actually free. Nothing hidden or any trials or crippleware or any of that. But... of course, you do have to give them an email address... not for confirmation, no, they pretty much say right out that you're gonna get spammed.

Downloaded, installed. No problems. Now today every time it starts, it quits unexpectedly.

That is a loss of quality in software and the people who make it.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: worker201 on 28 December 2005, 04:51
Hasn't bothered me much.  All my spam gets collected by Yahoo!'s spam filter, and Stuffit works just how I expected it to.  Using version 10.0.1.  Hasn't crashed in the 2 months I've had it.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: piratePenguin on 28 December 2005, 04:58
Would there not be more decent archive managers for Mac OS X? GNOME has File Roller, which looks like it'd do the job, but I've only used it about once.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: worker201 on 28 December 2005, 05:08
Actually, I've never used any automatic file compressors in Linux.  I mean, it takes a real dipshit to not know how to 'tar zxf' a file (or 'tar jxf').  I trust tar and g/bz2 zip, so I stick with them.  They do the work.  Same things can be done on a Mac.  It's just that Stuffit does all that stuff for you.

No offense to JJ, I mean, he knows his way around the Mac, but I have to assume that he is doing something wrong or nonstandard.  Stuffit has been/is a great program, and it has never failed me even once.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: hm_murdock on 28 December 2005, 05:55
Nope. I installed it and it sat there. I went into my old OS 9 Applications folder and ran Expander 6 and it's fine. I ran a disk verify, and there's no problems. I'll re-download Stuffit 10 later and see if that fixes the problem.

Like you said, Stuffit 10 works for you without error, just as, I'm sure it does for most folks. I have, however, heard of a number of quality issues with 10.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: WMD on 28 December 2005, 08:15
Odd...I have 10.4, and the version that's there is 7.0.3.  I've never had anything go wrong...except that one time it refused to expand a RAR file.  (unrar for Linux did it.)
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: hm_murdock on 28 December 2005, 08:29
Aye. My thing is, I was stupid and didn't install it :D
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: themacuser on 31 December 2005, 13:29
Stuffup Expander seems to screw up all the time on my OS X machines. I hate it. Give me gzipped DMGs any day.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: cymon on 31 December 2005, 20:25
I hate stuffit, I really just prefer Gzip, you don't have to register to use it.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: Orethrius on 31 December 2005, 21:30
7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/download.html) is free...
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: Siplus on 1 January 2006, 01:19
I don't really like stuffit expander that much...

I'm very accustomed to File Roller in Linux and WinRaR in Windows. Stuffit yeilds little funcitonality. If open a zipped file using stuffit, it unzips it right on the spot, for example.

I like being able to preview what the zip contains, and determining where i wish it to be extracted

That being said, stuffit has never crashed on me. It never fails extracting a file.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: M51DPS on 1 January 2006, 03:11
I remember using Stuffit for years on Classic, but these days I rarely really need it. Just about everything I download is encoded as a DMG (just open it in the Finder), zip (again, Finder in 10.3 and up can do it), or gzip/bzip (Terminal). I guess you could use Stuffit to open them, but what is the point?
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: cymon on 1 January 2006, 04:34
The finder now has support for gzip, bzip, tar, and any combination of these. The only archive it doesn't expand is the .sit archives.

Also, Safari will auto-unarchive, as well as mount dmg's.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: davidnix71 on 2 January 2006, 22:58
There is a hidden file expander called BOH or something like that, that appears occasionally when expanding a file Stuffit doesn't understand. 7-Zip is free and UnRarX, also free, comes in handy, too.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: cymon on 2 January 2006, 23:12
Yeah, but 7-zip doesn't work on the Macintosh.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: Orethrius on 2 January 2006, 23:35
Quote from: cymon
Yeah, but 7-zip doesn't work on the Macintosh.

 So pay for Tiger already.  ;)
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: cymon on 3 January 2006, 00:16
I did. I'm running 10.4.3, but when I go to the 7-zip page, the Mac version eludes me.

FIne, you get some command line clone, but really.....
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: hm_murdock on 3 January 2006, 02:03
I'm glad that everybody keeps talking about how great these apps that don't work with SIT are. My advice... use an older version of Stuffit made back when they still called themselves Aladdin rather than Allume.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: themacuser on 17 January 2006, 13:03
Quote from: cymon
I did. I'm running 10.4.3, but when I go to the 7-zip page, the Mac version eludes me.

FIne, you get some command line clone, but really.....


Get it from fink at fink.sf.net.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 18 January 2006, 03:30
7zip is awesome ... very good compression ratio ... (the best compression available for UNIX .. or so they brag) ... you can test the integrity of archives ... it's quite fast ... to bad it ain't for Mac ... bahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: themacuser on 18 January 2006, 09:25
Quote from: H_TeXMeX_H
7zip is awesome ... very good compression ratio ... (the best compression available for UNIX .. or so they brag) ... you can test the integrity of archives ... it's quite fast ... to bad it ain't for Mac ... bahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


Can someone not google or at least do some basic research?

http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/ports/?by=name&substr=7zip&Search=Submit
http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/p7zip
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19139

Seriously... come on. Are you that stupid?

Oh, and there's a GUI for it hiding in Fink somewhere under unstable. I forget the name.
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 19 January 2006, 03:46
Quote from: themacuser
Can someone not google or at least do some basic research?

http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/ports/?by=name&substr=7zip&Search=Submit (http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/ports/?by=name&substr=7zip&Search=Submit)
http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/p7zip (http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/p7zip)
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19139 (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19139)

Seriously... come on. Are you that stupid?

Oh, and there's a GUI for it hiding in Fink somewhere under unstable. I forget the name.

...

Quote from: cymon
Yeah, but 7-zip doesn't work on the Macintosh.

... uhhh ... I don't google stuff to check whether it is true or not, but I do enjoy making the users of any OS other than Linux feel compelled to switch ... the question of whether I'm stupid or not does not apply only to me it seems ... (make sure that when you throw a flame my way it doesn't also hit others next to me ... ) :D
Title: Re: The loss of quality in software.
Post by: Katron on 15 February 2006, 09:36
I have had problems with the Stuffit Expander 10 set. It seems to unexpectly quit all of the time, but I just use the built in BOMArchive Helper unless its a .sit or something.

.dmgs still are superior no matter what