TUAW recently took a look at Stuffit Deluxe 2010, the newest version of the long-lasting archiving software for the Mac:
First, the installer crashed during the initial installation with no error message in sight, leaving me to try to figure out what had happened. The second attempt was successful, but required that I log out of my current Mac session and log back in. That took an unusually long amount of time, and when I was finally able to use my machine again, iStat Menu showed that my dual-core CPU was pegged at 100%. While DropBox appeared to be the culprit and a reboot resolved the problem, I can’t help but think that the new addition of StuffIt Deluxe contributed to the issue.
Another thing that irritated me during the installation and setup was that I had to enter my registration code three times — once when installing the app, a second time for another purpose that I don’t recall, and a third time when I was signing up for StuffIt Connect. Why couldn’t I just enter my registration code once and be done with it? Well, that seems to be because this is not just a single application, but a set of seven applications that are sitting in the StuffIt folder. To be honest with you, I think there are more StuffIt applications hidden around my Mac, since signing up for Stuffit Connect appeared to launch one more application that wasn’t in the StuffIt folder.
Those are big issues for a program that’s been around for 20 years. TUAW also discusses the bloat that has been introduced with the newest version, which is disappointing. Back in the OS 9 days, Stuffit was a lean, mean archiving machine. It’s sad to see it go the way of say, Microsoft Office for Mac.