Stuffit Deluxe 12 released, but few Mac fans care anymore

News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

October 11, 2007

Stuffit Deluxe 12 released, but few Mac fans care anymore

Posted Oct. 11, ’07, 7:43 AM PT by Derik DeLong

Category | Software » Updates

Stuffit Stuffit was the best game in town in the olden days. When I started with System 7, Stuffit was a rock star, letting me cram tons onto the floppy disks I had to work with. It was fast and feature filled. And then OS X came and its speed disappeared. Up and vanished. OS X added built in compression and decompression with disk images and Zip archives. Well, they’re still around and released version 12.

I do have one dirty little secret though. I still like to keep their free Stuffit Expander software installed on my Macs for the plethora of formats it ably handles. Here’s the big problem. Smitch Micro (which now owns the products) still requires you to fill out a form with your name and email just to download the software. They then email you the link to download. Why not just put the link on the page? So they can spam you. I quote from their website:

Please note: By confirming your email address and downloading this file, you are signing up to receive periodic followup emails from us. Any emails we send you will contain unsubscribe information, and you may opt-out of future emails at any time.

Opt-out? I’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes. So here’s my response. Get bent Smith Micro. I’ll be using an email address that gets destroyed right after I give it to you. Then I’ll be handing that link out to every one that asks me.

10 Comments

Anonymous said:

Smith Micro's new policy is abusive. It's bad enough that we must go through hoops to keep spam from infesting our in-boxes, but to have a software company DEMAND and REQUIRE your e-mail address for "periodic follow-up mailings" is abusive, pure and simple. Let Smith Micro EARN the privilege of serving its customers instead of demanding it. Any software company that behaves in such an egregious fashion deserves to lose customers in droves. Hey, it happened to GM and Ford and Chrysler after they got arrogant and made crappy cards and refused to service them -- and as a result, the customers went off and bought Japanese cars instead....

Lesson learned, Smith Micro?

October 11, 2007 8:24 AM

fletcher

said:

I think there is still room for a utility like this. I've found recently that Stuffit does a better job at creating cross platform compatible ZIP files than does the Finder's built-in utility.

I'm also intrigued by the idea that they can do lossless compression of PDFs. That would be useful if it works.

I don't think your email address is too large a price to pay for a "free" utility. I'd rather get ads from Smith Micro than endless viagra ads and stock tips.

October 11, 2007 9:47 AM

Anonymous said:

Just remember that Stuffit Expander phones home every time you launch it (I love LittleSnitch!). If you deny it network access, it crashes.

October 11, 2007 10:48 AM

Matt Good said:

Try The Unarchiver:
http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

It's free, open-source, and spam-free.

October 11, 2007 11:33 AM

Chris P. said:

Anyone know of a good RARer for Macs? Since Stuffit is now officially obsolete, I'd like a new app to make and decompress my RAR files.

October 11, 2007 1:01 PM

Anonymous said: