Betalogue

Aladdin is being roundly chastised for using a kernel extension (and thereby risking the stability of the entire Mac OS X system) to implement a “new” feature where simply renaming a file with a “.sit”, “.zip”, etc. extension causes StuffIt Deluxe to compress the file.

What few people mention, however, is that the whole controversy stems from Aladdin’s own decision to actually implement the feature in the first place.

There are already countless ways to use StuffIt compression/expansion functionality: the application itself, the drag-and-drop applications that come with the product, the “Magic Menu”, etc. Why on earth did they feel that it was important to implement such a feature?

I am sure that there are some users out there who find it useful — but you have to weigh this against the danger posed by the very use of a kernel extension. It seems rather obvious to me that the decision to implement such a feature was made by Aladdin marketers who needed some “flashy” feature to justify the upgrade price.

You might also remember that I commented on Aladdin’s software updates a while back.

This is one software company that’s becoming less Mac-friendly (and therefore less user-friendly) by the day. With Mac OS X’s built-in compression tools, such as .tar archives and compressed disk images created by Disk Utility, StuffIt is becoming less and less useful anyway.

These recent moves are starting to look more and more like the final nails in the coffin.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Tuesday, October 7th, 2003 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.