Review: Stuffit Deluxe 10
- Article 5 of 89
- MacFormat, December 2005
Will you say "get stuffed" to Allume's Deluxe application?
There's an r in the month so it's time for Allume to release a new version of its Stuffit Deluxe utility. Formerly every Mac user's compression tool of choice, Stuffit has had fresh challenge from OS X ever since 10.3 included built-in zip compression and expansion. So new owner Allume Systems, which seems to produce an upgrade every five minutes, has had to pull its socks up to convince us that Stuffit is still a worthwhile add-on.
Version 10 builds on Stuffit Deluxe 9's already impressive list of features to provide an even more tempting feature-set. Top addition is a Spotlight plug-in for exposing the contents of Stuffit, zip and tar files to Spotlight searches. This at least beats the free Ziplight in actually working consistently, but the addition of the other formats make it invaluable to anyone with a range of archives. Automator Actions for including different compression and expansion formats in workflows will be useful for professionals. A nice touch is the ability to view thumbnails of stored images in sitx files, so you don't need to decompress them to see if they're the files you want.
There are other new features that Deluxe shares with the cheaper Stuffit Standard. These include a compression system that Allume claims can reduce JPEG file sizes by 30%, improved .Mac support and a better encryption system. We'd have liked more focus on speed, instead of some of these latter options, since Stuffit is still glacial compared to OS X's multi-threaded zip compression.
Unfortunately, all these goodies are obscured by the price tag. Allume is charging the earth for Stuffit Deluxe - nearly £60 including VAT. If it were a third of the price, it would be a must-have. Instead, Stuffit Deluxe 10 is a luxury - with luxury-pricing to match - that most people can live without.