Review: Stuffit Deluxe 2011
- Article 16 of 19
- MacUser, October 2010
Stuffit Deluxe is a catch-all collection of applications and OS additions for including file compression in your workflow. Available way back when on Mac OS System 7, it was initially based around the ability to create and decode the Mac-specific de facto compression archives, .sit. Over time, other features and other formats were included, including the improved .sitx. But with the advent of OS X 10.3 and built-in .zip archiving, Stuffit Deluxe lost its appeal.
Now, every year, Smith Micro has been producing a new version of Stuffit Deluxe. Most years, you’d be forgiven for looking at the previous $70-odd price tag and the few new features the new version carries and wondering why you should buy it. Stuffit Deluxe 2011 is a rare release that’s almost worth the price, thanks to a complete overhaul of the product.
Many of the old familiars from previous versions are still here: Magic Menu, which enables instant access from the menubar and keyboard shortcuts to compression function and workflows, is there, as are the Automators plug-ins, command-line tools, MacFUSE support for mounting archives as disks, Growl-support for system-wide notifications, and the QuickLook extension for previewing archive contents. The Spotlight plug-in for searching for files inside archives is also there, as is the Stuffit Archive Manager application for viewing all archives on your hard drive in one place, manipulating them, extracting individual files, backing them up on a schedule and converting them to other formats. There are plug-ins for iPhoto and Aperture for accessing Stuffit functions directly. The new integrated SendStuffNow service is basically still Stuffit Deluxe 2010’s Stuffit Connect service: a cloud service for storing files to which you can send links so that others can download them, bypassing the maximum file sizes and account limits that email systems sometimes throw up.
New with this release, however, is an overall update to make applications 64-bit and a change to the StuffitX .sitx format to improve its compression functions. The move to 64-bit certainly makes compression feel faster, but with the majority of people using .zip files, the improvements to the .sitx format will probably be irrelevant to most people.
But it’s the big change in this release that should appeal. The decade-old familiars of Stuffit Expander and DropStuff are gone (but still available from Smith Micro as separate apps), replaced by a single new application: Stuffit Destinations. This is a toolbar of workflow tiles that you can add to, customise and rearrange. When you drag a file onto a particular tile or you click on it, the tile with expand the archive if it’s an expansion tile or compress it if it’s a compression tile. Filters can be set for each tile so that only files that match particular conditions will be compressed.
The tile will also put the resulting files into a particular destination – hence the name. Destinations for .zip, .sitx and .tar archives can be local folders, CDs/DVDs, an iDisk, a disk image or an email, as well as SendStuffNow.
Stuffit Destinations is certainly a good 1.0 application. Smith Micro has ripped out the complexities of the old Stuffit Deluxe apps and made setting up even quite complicated workflows (eg “compress an archive as an encrypted zip file, upload it to an FTP server then notify me using Growl and an email sent to a particular address when it’s done”) the matter of a few mouse clicks. The interface is attractive and easy to understand.
But it’s not a floating window, so it will get lost behind other windows. Dragging and dropping files to the Dock icon will always result in a .sitx archive, even if you delete all .sitx tiles – a favouritism towards .sitx that extends to Magic Menu as well. MobileMe only works with your own MobileMe account and requires hacking to make work with someone else’s. The SendStuffNow service isn’t free for files over 2GB and you get 10GB of bandwidth per month with the free account. The linking of Stuffit to the SendStuffNow service as a way for Smith Micro to get additional revenues means that there’s no support for better, cheaper, competing services such as SugarSync and DropBox.
At $49 for Stufft Deluxe for Mac, a bundled copy of Stuffit Deluxe for Windows and licences for three PCs or Macs, this is probably the most appealing and affordable release so far. If you’re used to repeatedly sending large files around, it won’t be long before Stuffit pays for itself.