When I first started making web pages. My first <HTML> (back then we caps our tags because we were gangsta). I had just installed Netscape Navigator and was writing my pages (I don’t think we called it a site back then, the whole lot was a website), I wanted to share some punk rock music I was into as my website was a giant list of links to other bands etc etc. Me, being on Mac OS 7, just went with what I had been using, sit.hqx. I had no idea this wasn’t “standard”, no idea other folks couldn’t stuffit-expander their way to easy file sharing. Apache web server had no problem sending the mime-type. Stuffit will forever be baked in my heart as my first archive “wait you mean you can’t open that?” experience on the internet. Mind you this was pre-winrar. Pre-7z. Pre-AOL. Pre-Flatscreens. Pre-cellphones. Fuck I’m old.
The StuffIt I remember was created by high school student Raymond Lau — apparently in 1987 (37 years ago) according to Wikipedia:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StuffIt" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StuffIt</a><p>Always blew my mind that a "kid" wrote this app.
The Unarchiver (available on the Mac App Store) is the Jack-of-All-Trades decompressor of choice for me on my Mac these days, and can actually handle quite a few versions of StuffIt archives.
Oh the joys of .sit.hqx.<p>Mac classic resource forks, while most user friendly, were maximally power user opaque. OS X resource forks implemented as files create underlying file system messiness on non macs across network file systems but at least solved the migration and backup problem in a UNIX-like way. A slight tradeoff that's a win for interoperability.<p>Windows NTFS ADS, allowing any file to contain any number of other files hidden to the user was a terrible idea that never should've happened. It still works in Windows 11 and it's a giant security vulnerability that marches on because of the tyranny of "compatibility".<p>File metadata should be possible but it should be limited to essential OS housekeeping activities but definitely not by applications.<p>Faithful backup, restoration, migration, and archival needs keen attention to the preservation of platform-specific filesystem metadata and maintaining the faithful integrity of such.
Abour 30 years ago, I remember using Disk Doubler / Auto Doubler to wring more out of an 80 Mb hard drive on a IIsi... having it work in the background seemed sort of miraculous.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiskDoubler" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiskDoubler</a>
Too bad they don’t tell the Stuffit history. How Raymond Lau (?) started it in the 80s and how it grew into the business it is now. (Is it a buneisnss I have no idea.)<p>Used StuffIt all the time in the classic Mac until Compact Pro came along. Compression wars!
In the late 90s my Dutch consultancy company worked for McGraw Hill. As a non-native English speaker, I didn’t think much of the name Stuffit until I told a graphics designer at McGraw Hill to use Stuffit to handle a bunch of files I sent her. She looked at me both appalled and curious, likely thinking that this weird European said something offensive. I apologized profusely and explained that it was nothing more than a tool to make files smaller. I still think she thought I pulled her leg.
Blast from the past! Downloading new packs from iconfactory and seeing that lavender clamp just hit different from the windows-yellow zip archives. Never thought about it until now but maybe it was just the native colorscheme?
I know I'm beating a dead horse but god I hate seeing such a nostalgic application done up in this art style <a href="https://www.stuffit.com/imgs/header-illustration.svg" rel="nofollow">https://www.stuffit.com/imgs/header-illustration.svg</a><p>Retvrn to <a href="https://macintoshgarden.org/sites/macintoshgarden.org/files/screenshots/StuffIt_Deluxe_2_about.png" rel="nofollow">https://macintoshgarden.org/sites/macintoshgarden.org/files/...</a>
I might be wrong but I remember that I couldn't extract some <i>really</i> old Stuffit archives using the current versions, but an old copy of 'stuffit520.611linux-i386' I tracked down could.<p>Does anyone know if that makes sense? Did the format ever change?
I'm surprised reading this thread how many people download 3rd party tools for compression. 15+ years developing on macs and I've never needed to add anything special (beyond tar/gz). Guess I don't (de)compress enough to notice?
This is my first time hearing about it, despite daily driving MacBooks for 10 years. Does it have any advantages over other compression software? I've been using Keka for a long time and it has yet to disappoint me.
Note that they stopped updating everything in 2020, I think the expander apps should still work (I don't see why not). The company owning it is focusing on... some software for cellphone carriers, I think.
Be aware, after entering the site ,I didnt click on anything and I just found out that a dmg file has been downloaded on my phone. Not sure how its that possible, but it happened.