Historically, versions of Aladdin Systems' StuffIt Deluxe that end in .5 have been great products, and StuffIt Deluxe 6.5 is no exception.

StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 had the features we expected from the Mac's premier compression utility--Magic Menu, for easily creating and expanding compressed archives from within the Finder, and the ability to browse and extract individual items from a StuffIt archive--but its support for Mac OS X was lackluster. That has changed.

With version 6.5, Aladdin brings the Magic Menu feature to OS X. Although OS X's different Finder functionality prevented Aladdin from bringing StuffIt's True Finder Integration features (including the ability to create archives by appending .sit, .sea, and .zip to a file's name) to OS X, Magic Menu support is a huge boon. The program also supports Palm OS packages and Unix TAR archives, and it includes StuffIt Express Personal Edition (PE), a useful tool for automating the creation of archives and transferring them via e-mail and FTP.

Macworld's Buying Advice

We're glad to see StuffIt's Magic Menu brought to OS X, and we welcome StuffIt Express PE to the older Mac OS and OS X.