StuffIt Deluxe 10 arrives Allume Software has released version 10 of StuffIt Deluxe, the Macintosh user's favourite compression suite. While the new features (JPEG compression, previewing pictures within archives without decompressing, Spotlight interoperability, Automator support and new SEAs) don't really sound like must-haves, long time users might find the new version attractive mostly because StuffIt Deluxe has always been the most complete suite for everything "archiving" - and more features are better here. The fact that StuffIt 10 also gives better performance for the "better" compression level (smaller files) might give the StuffIt X format ".sitx" (nothing to do with the version number 10 of StuffIt, this was related to the first Mac OS X clean version of StuffIt) a boost. Most people - until now - probably lived with a bit larger files, because until now, the "better" compression simply was too slow.
The price tag of 80 USD, however, might harm their goal to find new users. The price for anyone with an older StuffIt license (StuffIt Deluxe 9 or earlier) is 30 USD, and I think they should use that for new users and make the update for older users more like 9 USD or 19. New Mac users are probably not even aware of StuffIt, now that Tiger doesn't come with Expander anymore and that the Finder has integrated archiving in the .zip-format. - posted by Patrick Armbruster @ 21:38 [article link]