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tictactoe · Feb 13, 2005, 04:26 AM

Maybe it's normal? I have a 1.33ghz G4 with 1.25gb ram and it takes me about 10 minutes to expand a 600mb .zip file. On my previous 3.0ghz P4 desktop, this would take about a minute or so. Is this normal?

Dr.Michael · Feb 13, 2005, 06:42 AM

Originally posted by tictactoe:
Maybe it's normal? I have a 1.33ghz G4 with 1.25gb ram and it takes me about 10 minutes to expand a 600mb .zip file. On my previous 3.0ghz P4 desktop, this would take about a minute or so. Is this normal?

Do you use stuffit? That is slow.
Open the terminal and try unzip. That is as fast as you can get it on a mac.

type: unzip <<filename>>

Simon · Feb 13, 2005, 06:59 AM

Originally posted by Dr.Michael:
Do you use stuffit? That is slow.
Open the terminal and try unzip. That is as fast as you can get it on a mac.

type: unzip <<filename>>

Interesting. Does that mean StuffIt doesn't rely on unzip, but rather has its own unzipping implementation? Rather senseless if theirs is slower I guess.

Chuckit · Feb 13, 2005, 07:21 AM

It's fairly well-known that Stuffit uses an obscenely slow zip codec. Why? Because it's Stuffit.

sideus · Feb 13, 2005, 07:40 AM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It's fairly well-known that Stuffit uses an obscenely slow zip codec. Why? Because it's Stuffit.

I didn't know this. Now I do.

Simon · Feb 13, 2005, 08:01 AM

Originally posted by sideus:
I didn't know this. Now I do.

Likewise here.

Keiretsu · Feb 13, 2005, 10:02 AM

Originally posted by tictactoe:
Maybe it's normal? I have a 1.33ghz G4 with 1.25gb ram and it takes me about 10 minutes to expand a 600mb .zip file. On my previous 3.0ghz P4 desktop, this would take about a minute or so. Is this normal?

You have two options:

a) associate zip files with /System/Library/CoreServices/BOMArchiveHelper.app

b) install OpenUp (you'll find it on MacUpdate)

You'll only want to use Stuffit for the special Mac formats such as .sit .sitx .hqx .bin and not for the UNIX native formats!

Dr.Michael · Feb 13, 2005, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by Simon:
Interesting. Does that mean StuffIt doesn't rely on unzip, but rather has its own unzipping implementation? Rather senseless if theirs is slower I guess.

I am sure this is because of historical reasons. Stuffit exists much longer than unix tools on the mac.

A second reason might be that they also ship a version for Windows. So they need an engine anyway.

My first guess was that it could be because of the gpl of the unix tools. Unix tools mustn't be used by commercial software products. But there are ways out of this. Transmit for example is only a gui for an ftp engine. As long as Alume doesn't ship unzip and rely on its presence on the target platform it might be consistent with the gpl. Apple of course charges for Mac OS although they ship the tools.

tictactoe · Feb 13, 2005, 01:39 PM

What about .rar files?

RonnieoftheRose · Feb 13, 2005, 02:51 PM

Originally posted by tictactoe:
What about .rar files?

Get UnRarX.

slffl · Feb 13, 2005, 03:00 PM

Do you have the latest version of Stuffit? I don't think it takes that long on my 17" 1.0GHz 1GB PB.

amazing · Feb 13, 2005, 04:15 PM

Originally posted by tictactoe:
Maybe it's normal? I have a 1.33ghz G4 with 1.25gb ram and it takes me about 10 minutes to expand a 600mb .zip file. On my previous 3.0ghz P4 desktop, this would take about a minute or so. Is this normal?

Stuffit has a problem where it goes online to check for the latest version, which takes forever if the server's busy. Once that's unchecked in prefs, then it's faster. Of course, it's still slow (I was gonna say "dog-slow" but that does a disservice to the dogs.)

tictactoe · Feb 13, 2005, 07:49 PM

I downloaded unrarx and that is taking forever on the same file. Just to make sure it wasn't the file, I tried it on a couple of other files with the same end result. I have my power settings set on "automatic" and not "best performance" does that make a difference?

iREZ · Feb 13, 2005, 09:53 PM

It might, why not check if it's faster under Highest Performance.

alphasubzero949 · Feb 13, 2005, 09:57 PM

Stuffit is now useless on Panther (except for their proprietary formats).

Agent69 · Feb 14, 2005, 03:44 PM

I install StuffIt only to deal with the one or two programs that I use that are still distributed in StuffIt format. I wonder if that the newest, paid for shareware version of StuffIt is faster than the lite version included with Panther?

Thanks to disk images and Panther's built in support for free compressors, there is little reason to use a closed archive format.

Dr.Michael · Feb 14, 2005, 06:01 PM

Ok, I need numbers. Since I often unzip large files it is interesting to find the fastest tool.

Unzipping a 96 mb file:

Stuffit 8: 50 sec
Stuffit 9: 40 sec
BOMArchiveHelper: 34 sec
OpenUp: 33 sec
terminal unzip: 30 sec

Agent69 · Feb 15, 2005, 09:04 AM

Originally posted by RonnieoftheRose:
Get UnRarX.

I just had to decompress a Rar file just last night. StuffIt wouldn't work with it but UnRarX did just fine, and it is free software.