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Aladdin StuffIt

Stuffit the Best Compression Software for Macintosh

Aladdin StuffIt is an application that compresses files. Stuffit became popular in the mid-1990s because of the need to store large data on floppy disks and CDs.

Stuffit has changed hands over the years, and is now owned by Smith Micro.

Stuffit Expander

I purchased the application in the 1990s, but never felt the need to update it. Once I was storing data onto CDs and DVDs I didn't encounter any max storage issues.

Classic description

Here's the description of Stuffit from the Educorp Catalog from 1990:

Stuffit Educorp Catalog

Technology Got the Better of the Application

Over the past few years the application had lost its effectiveness. Thanks to cloud services such as Dropbox and Google Drive:

  • It's easier to store large documents - no longer do users have to worry about the limited space of disks, CDs or DVDs.
  • Sharing files are super easy, simply upload a file to DropBox right click and get a shareable link to send in an email or in Slack.
  • Cloud services allow users to encrypt files and offer monitoring services, something that Stuffit didn't provide.
  • Storage has gotten cheaper. You can get a good quality 6TB USB drive for about $120. Apple Cloud goes for about $2.99 a month for 200 GB (which is about 3 DVDs)

Still Around

You can still buy Stuffit from SmithMicro for $19.95. The cool feature is the new StuffIt Destinations Toolbar, where you can drag and drop your files to various destinations.

Stuffit still is an important app because of encryption and storage space. For example, you can encrypt project folders that you don't want to end up in file search results from Spotlight or on shared space in Google Drive or Dropbox. Since Spotlight won't index the files,

Long Waiting Time

One of my all-time favorite screenshots:

Long Time UNStuff

That comes to 84,308,617 days or 2,309.82 Centuries. The Mar19_2517.jpg file should definitely be worth the wait.

 

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About

As someone who has worked on Macs since 1989, I will use my experience to share tips and tricks with you on Fridays. As a Mac user since 1989, I have seen the evolution of Mac software and hardware, and I know how Mac computers work. I also know how to troubleshoot and fix Mac problems that can arise.

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