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Best Zip Program for OSX (not stuffit or leopards built in)

Sean Dempsey

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
I need something more reliable for zipping and unzipping files. I have to use the .zip format for clients who use windows and don't like .rars.

Leopards "compress" option has been really spotty for me, leaving files out or using cached versions of files. No idea how or why it's doing this, but I've tested it out and it's really annoying.

I have stuffit, which I hate.

Isn't there anything as useful and friendly as WinRAR out there?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't those 2 programs just un-compress files, but not actually create new archives?
 
Ah, my apologies, read the post too quickly. I always use the "Compress" option, which seems to work fine for me.
 
Sean Dempsey said:
I need something more reliable for zipping and unzipping files. I have to use the .zip format for clients who use windows and don't like .rars.

Leopards "compress" option has been really spotty for me, leaving files out or using cached versions of files. No idea how or why it's doing this, but I've tested it out and it's really annoying.

I have stuffit, which I hate.

Isn't there anything as useful and friendly as WinRAR out there?
Click to expand...

You're the first I've heard complain about bomarchive. Perhaps its a PEBKAC issue?
 
Trip.Tucker said:
You're the first I've heard complain about bomarchive. Perhaps its a PEBKAC issue?
Click to expand...

If I need to zip up a folder, if I right click the folder and choose "compress..." it compresses it and names it after the folder, but occasionally when I send (or decompress the folder myself) files are just plain ommitted.

Plus, there have been times that I finish a file, and compress it with some others to send to a client. When they get it, they get a version that I had saved a few hours ago, but not the most recent. And yes, I have tested it and am 100% sure that I had saved the file before compressing it.

I don't get it, but using the built in leopard compressor has been very hit or miss. I don't see how I can select 10 files, compress them into a .zip, and then when I send it to the client, they are missing files.

Or, even better, I had 10 folders with 6 files each in them, I select all 10 folders, compress them, and then decompress it in a different location. Folders 6-10 had no files in them.

I don't see how that's a "user error".
 
You can try BetterZip. I've tried using it and it works like a charm :)
 
tarpit works fine for me.

has a few settings you can change and different compression methods
 
I've been using The Unarchiver to decompress files but I guess I've just now realized that's all it does. Does the built-in archiver for OS X compress to anything other than .Zip? I mostly use the RAR format.
 
I had tried Betterzip last night but my 9.3mb file zipped up to 8.4mb. Not much of a savings there. Window's built in zip utility can take a 15mb excel file and zip it up to under a meg.

Now with betterzip there was an option to compress more risking slower operation and on a G4 PB it did not take all but a minute, if that. But it was slower than normal compression. The savings there from 9.3 mb was still showing at 8.4 mb. That doesn't make much sense to me.

With Yemuzip I had the same results but like that has an e-mail feature. That's always nice since I usually only zip things up to e-mail them.

Maybe I am expecting too much. Since I don't use this function often enough I don't see justification in buying something like stuffit at $80 for a license.
 
I had strange issues with OS X's Compress function when dealing with Windows users. I'd zip the file, open it with OS X and all my files are there. Then I sent that very file to a friend, and when opened, it's empty. And when she clicked Extract all, it'd go through the motions, then suddenly stop and say it cannot extract.

I tried this twice, even.

So thanks guys for the alternatives, they probably will come to be useful in the future.
 
I would recommend Springy ( http://www.springyarchiver.com/ )

From my blog http://www.jroller.com/sjivan/entry/my_osx_developer_toolbox_is

I use 7-Zip for Windows all the time to view the contents of a zip, jar or war file. Unfortunately the OSX unarchiver does not have the option of viewing the contents of the archive without uncompressing it. There are a few tools on OSX that support viewing the contents of an archive like Stuffit and Zipeg however I found Springy to be the most user-friendly and it supports two key features that are missing from Zipeg : a) the ability to right click on a file in the archive and select "Edit" to open the file in an editor of your choice and b) modifying the opened file in your editor and when the file is saved, the archive automatically gets updated with the change. In other words, it has excellent support for in-place editing of files in an archive.
Click to expand...
 
Sean Dempsey said:
I need something more reliable for zipping and unzipping files. I have to use the .zip format for clients who use windows and don't like .rars.

Leopards "compress" option has been really spotty for me, leaving files out or using cached versions of files. No idea how or why it's doing this, but I've tested it out and it's really annoying.

I have stuffit, which I hate.

Isn't there anything as useful and friendly as WinRAR out there?
Click to expand...

If you still need one WinZip Mac works very well. it zips files quiet well.
 
jessica. said:
I had tried Betterzip last night but my 9.3mb file zipped up to 8.4mb. Not much of a savings there. Window's built in zip utility can take a 15mb excel file and zip it up to under a meg.
Click to expand...

Some files are more compressible then others. JPG files do not compress well, an neither do good M4V files. Whereas Excel files are very compressible. The only right test is to compress the same file with every different tool; that will give you a more accurate understanding of each tools compression algorithm. The ZIP algorithm is quite standard now, so I would suspect you won't find much difference between the different tools.
 
ravenvii said:
I had strange issues with OS X's Compress function when dealing with Windows users. I'd zip the file, open it with OS X and all my files are there. Then I sent that very file to a friend, and when opened, it's empty. And when she clicked Extract all, it'd go through the motions, then suddenly stop and say it cannot extract.
Click to expand...

I had the same problem, it turned out that the version of ZIP I had in Windows (the built in one or WinZIP) was older then the one that was built into the Mac and thus couldn't see the file structure. I figured out how to upgrade the windows side and all worked well from then on.
 
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