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May.22
2008

A (very) Brief Note To Users of OSX 10.5...

Please follow these steps:

1. Find wherever the Stuffit Expander applet is hiding on your computer.

2. Delete it.

There is a program that comes with OSX now, called "Archive Utility." This program, entirely unlike Stuffit Expander, is not hopelessly, completely, tragically, totally FUCKED. Use that instead. You'll be happier, and so will I.

Thanks for listening.

Comments:

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I'm not sure if I should ask, but what happened? :-)

posted May 23, 2008 by Peppe

I'm using Archive Utility for all other types of archives and Stuffit for .sit ... Every single time that I clean upgrade OSX and am happy not to have to use that miserable piece of archive software ever again, I eventually realize that I need to be able to open a Stuffit archive someone's made and have to install the goddamn Expander again.

posted May 23, 2008 by vae

No reason in particular. I just get tired of people writing that are utterly confused about what happened to their installer, or the MIDI learn assignments, or this, that, or the other thing, and come to find out they unzipped the archive with Stuffit Expander. That piece of shit software corrupts roughly 2/3 of what it unzips, and there's no reason whatsoever for it to be included in a normal OSX install.

Part of the problem is that old school Mac types tend to dote on it, for reasons I can't begin to fathom. (Apparently, they don't remember when they changed the SIT format between v4 and v5 of Stuffit Expander, and v5 wouldn't open any SIT created with v4 or earlier.)

The other part of the problem is that there are a lot of people that have Switched in the last couple years, and they don't know shit from shinola about running OSX or Mac legacy stuff, and they'll use whatever comes down the pike.

I have a customer today that wrote me with an issue, which after several confused go-rounds I figured out was because Stuffit garbled the installer. So I gave him _extremely_ clear and simple instructions to fix the problem. Step one was "Open a Finder window." He immediately wrote back and asked "what's a finder window?"

sigh.

Anyhow, just trying to be helpful. Seriously, use Archive Utility. If you're on 10.3 or 10.4, use BOMarchiveHelper (which is essentially Archive Utility with a different name). If some person stuck in the 80s sends you a SIT, by all means use Stuffshit Exfucker, but don't even THINK of using that pile of dog turds to unarchive ZIP files.

-CR

posted May 23, 2008 by Chris Randall

One of the only reason I use stuffit expander is because I don't want to expand files to the same folder they're in. Too messy. It never really screws anything up for me, though I have had problems in the past that I've blotted out, so your post got me to download the newest version of the Unarchiver and try that again. I expands to the location of your choice, which I must have.

bb

posted May 23, 2008 by bongo_x

"That piece of shit software corrupts roughly 2/3 of what it unzips, and there's no reason whatsoever for it to be included in a normal OSX install."

I'm probably just misinterpreting your words, since I'm pretty sure it isn't included in 10.4 and 10.5 installs at all anymore. I've had to download it myself (and use their goddamn "give us your e-mail and we'll send a link to you" system) every time I have to open a .sit and realize Expander is not installed.

And yeah, it's quite a tragic piece of mess.

"One of the only reason I use stuffit expander is because I don't want to expand files to the same folder they're in. Too messy."

OSX built-in BOMArchiveHelper / Archive Utility doesn't do that here, by default it extracts to a new folder that has a name derived from the archive name. UnRarX does extract to the same directory though, which kind of ticks me off. I've had to clean up a folder once or twice because of that...

posted May 23, 2008 by vae

Nah, stupidity is the real culprit..Stuffit is a convenient way to unpack various formats using the one utility..the last version seems to have no bugs i've ever seen...particularly with zip files..

posted May 23, 2008 by quantize

Never had trouble with Stuffit - but then again, I'm one of those old-school Mac people who at times finds himself missing the glory days of System 7.

But... I will admit that I never use Stuffit any more, and don't have it installed. The built-in Archive Utility does what it needs to do.

- Jeff

posted May 23, 2008 by Jeff C

Agreed totally but I use and recommend The Unarchiver from link [wakaba.c3.cx] - it installs seamlessly and handles a few things like .rar archives that BOMArchiveHelper doesn't. I think the last time i had to open a .sit archive was circa 2001 anyway...

posted May 23, 2008 by ewar

The Unarchiver is a nice piece of software, agreed. And if you install that one and the Xee image viewer from the same guy, you can view images more painlessly and conveniently than with Preview, and even browse images straight from archives without having to extract the whole thing.

I think the previous occasion I had to open a .sit was something like two days ago, unfortunately I can't remember what it actually was.

posted May 23, 2008 by vae

You are correct- Expander corrupts the majority of zips and rars. I launch Parallels and unzip my files using winrar. I have my Mac folders mapped within the VM, so it's much easier doing it that way.

posted May 23, 2008 by Jaysen

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