The Apple-Project.com

I'll be the first to call myself out: It's bad form to bad-mouth others in the Mac community. But I'm going to make an exception.

Stuffit has to be the most annoying software I've ever used. I'm not the only one that has a poor opinion of both the software and the company behind it.

First of all, Smith Micro has a backward idea of how to "share" their free software. They claim that it's "Always FREE. Never nags you for payment!" In theory, that sounds like software bliss, but the truth is that they just nag you in a different way.

When the "FREE" copy of Stuffit Expander expires, or requires an update the user is forced to go to Smith Micro's site and download an update. As far as we've ever been able to determine, the software is unusable after getting the update error. That's not very cool at all.

The other thing we hate about Stuffit Expander and Smith Micro is that they require an email address to download the updated application. Smith Micro sends you the download link via email. In my book: That's not free.

The point of this post is two-fold. First to rant about Stuffit Expander (man, that felt great), and to offer an alternative.

One alternative we like over here is The Unarchiver. This piece of free ware does its job. Period. It's out of the way, fat-free, and quite nearly replaces the app from hell: Stuffit Expander.

"Quite nearly replaces Stuffit?" Yes, unfortunately, at the time this entry was posted The Unarchiver (developer's site) does have its expansion limits. But, based on the rave reviews this software is getting, I'm betting that contributors will enable it to handle just about every filetype at some point in the near future.

Try it if you hate StuffIt, try it if you just like really well-made Mac software.

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Here's a great article on how to run OSX, Linux, Windows Vista and XP on your brand new MacBook Pro.

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Don't miss the How to Buy a Macintosh Guide. Save money on your next Apple Computer purchase.

MyMac.com put together a list of Freeware and Shareware must-haves this week. Check it out. I don't agree with all the picks, but who will.

The two pieces of software that agree with Owen Rubin on include:

Little Snitch
VLC Media Player

Little Snitch (about $25) should ship with Apple's OS X. This firewall-enhancement's learning curve is a little steep for the new Mac user, for sure, but once the basics of Little Snitch are understood it's easy to use and manage. Most importantly, it protects the Mac in crucial and convenient ways both by blocking a lot of stuff users never knew was happening to their computers to begin with.

Little Snitch also has one of the first OS X icons I saw and liked immediately, not that that counts for anything.

The other must-have from Owen's list is VLC Media Player (free). The short reason to download this app is that it picks up where Quicktime leaves off. VLC plays stuff that Quicktime won't, and it does it with an interface that's nearly as good as something Apple would design.

Drag the app into your Dock, right next to Quicktime, and then start dropping media files on it that won't play in QT . Or, if you're like some of us, skip Quicktime altogether.

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37Signals.com is improving their already very good Backpack Web app. You can check it out here.

Here's a snapshot of the new layout:

Here's what Jason Fried, with 37Signals had to say about it on their messageboard:

We've been very hard at work overhauling and improving the tools on your Backpack pages. In the next few weeks we'll release these new features, but first we wanted to give you a little preview of one of the major changes.



Once we release this update you'll be able to move any list, note, image, file, etc. around on the page. You can put a note at the top, then a list, then a file, then another note, then a list, then another list, then a photo gallery, etc. You'll be able to organize a page any way you'd like.




We've been using Backpack for quite a while. Nearly a year if that's possible. We use it as a todo list, bookmark list we can access quickly from any connected Mac, and as a way to track things like rebates (complete with URLs). But you can do pretty much anything you want with it.

Wait! There's more. TUAW just posted link to an Apple profile of 37Signals here. They're in good company One of my companies was featured there a few years ago (link no longer live).

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Don't miss the How to Buy a Macintosh Guide. Save money on your next Apple Computer purchase.