Product Reviews

The StuffIt suite of compression programs will be familiar to just about every Mac user. However, thanks to ever-cheaper disk space, built-in Zip archiving in Mac OS X, and the fact that StuffIt Expander is no longer bundled with new Macs, many have doubted the continued relevance of StuffIt Deluxe, the Mac's leading commercial archiving program.

Yet Deluxe, the premium version of Smith Micro's range of compression programs, remains vital to many. While version 11 - now a Universal Binary - adds no new compression and expansion formats to the dozen or so types it already understands, it offers features that are difficult to match elsewhere, such as password-protected archives and the ability to segment compressed files.

Although it comprises an almost identical suite of applications to its predecessors, StuffIt Deluxe 11 introduces an entirely new look for the program with the arrival of the Archive Manager, which acts as the suite's hub and enables you to find, view, create and open archives from a single window.

Although well implemented, few could argue that the technology behind Archive Manager is innovative. It simply harnesses the search technology built into OS X Tiger to group collections of archives that match specified criteria. A selection of predefined collections, which gather items in common compression formats, populate a pane on the left when you first open Archive Manager, but you can easily create your own collections in the same way you create Smart Folders on the OS X Tiger desktop or Smart Playlists in iTunes. Collections aren't restricted to compressed files, either: you can keep collections of recently edited uncompressed documents or image files ready

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for backup. Perhaps the handiest feature is the way you can filter the contents of your archives by entering terms in a search field at the top of the window. Finding an original document from an archive has never been easier.

Archive Manager isn't just an organisational tool. You can also create archives from a collection of uncompressed files selected in its main window. And as collections act almost identically to Smart Folders, it's no surprise that they share the same benefits, with their contents updating in real time.

StuffIt Deluxe's biggest attraction for designers is lossless Jpeg compression. It's easy to be sceptical of the developer's claim that images can be shrunk by up to 30% without affecting image quality, but we found it largely lived up to those claims, compressing Jpegs by an average of 28%.

The only disadvantage of compressing image files in this way is that they must be expanded again before they can be edited. At least in version 11, StuffIt can attach thumbnail previews to images in archives, which can then be previewed in a drawer in the Archive Manager. This means you don't have to uncompress an archive of Jpegs to see its contents. Coupled with Deluxe's ability to create individual archives of multiple images, it saves considerable disk space without sacrificing quality. Again there's only one caveat: thumbnails can only be attached to Jpeg-based .sitx archives.

Most of the rest of the suite, including StuffIt Expander, DropStuff, and a tool for building self-extracting files remain virtually unchanged. But there are performance improvements throughout, most noticeably on dual-core and multi-threaded machines. Other enhancements include better Zip encryption and the ability to create local indexes for archives stored offline.

StuffIt Deluxe 11's transition to a Universal Binary and its organisational revamp amount to just enough to justify an upgrade. However, if you're new to the program, the story is different. A critical part of the program's real value - its ubiquitousness - is lost, as you can no longer guarantee that other users will be able to easily open a StuffIt archive. Perhaps ironically for a program that prides itself on its compression technology, the reasons to buy it at full price continue to shrink.