The Unarchiver is better than the default OS X app because it can handle many more formats and integrates better with Finder. In addition, it can also handle filenames in foreign character and supports a huge range of formats including Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many others.

There really is very little to criticize in The Unarchiver. It's fast, free and can handle just about anything. It's easy to use and doesn't consume a lot of system resources. The only thing some people may miss is a 64 bit version although it's hardly necessary.

The Unarchiver is everything a decompression package should be and best of all, it's free.

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Because it's open source, XBMC has been modified by some Mac users to create Plex although XBMC is the original base on which Plex is built. Which one you prefer will depend on what you want in a media center but XBMC is a pretty good contender being easy to use, slick, and supported by a large community of enthusiastic users.

XBMC has a highly “skinnable” interface meaning that it can look radically different based on which skin is used. Confluence is used by default, so this is what will greet you upon install but you may wish to change it to something else using some of the free skins here. Some of them are absolutely stunning and blow Front Row out of the water.

XBMC functions very well as a standard media player although it's far better if you use as a complete home hub for your entertainment needs. XBMC supports a huge range of remote controls and keyboard shortcuts, and it feels like a real entertainment center. XBMC can be used as a standalone player or to stream videos over a network. You can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. For example, XBMC can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, most popular video formats on your hard drive, and even files inside ZIP and RAR archives.

If you want it to detect what you have, XBMC will scan all of your media and automatically create a personalized library complete with box covers, descriptions, and fanart. Finally, there are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations.

XBMC is a fantastic media center although if you don't want to go to the hard work of customizing it for Macs, Plex may offer you a better alternative.

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RarMachine is a powerful RAR archive manager that you can use it to compress and extract all RAR files downloaded on internet or compressed on a PC.

WinRAR is one of the most powerful and useful archiving tools on the net so a tool like this is long overdue. RarMachine can compress any type of file and extract RAR archives with ease. There's no need to access Terminal as the whole archiving process is automated. This makes is much easier to use than RAR which has no GUI at all.

It is also fully integrated with Finder and it also allows you to use a password, create divisions in RAR files and extract divided RAR files. Everything you need to perform with RarMachine can be accessed by Ctrl-clicking or right-clicking and accessing it through the 'More' menu. Probably the only real downsides are that RarMachine doesn't compress batches of files and it's not free, although it's very cheap to upgrade.

For anyone that's been struggling to open, compress and manage RAR files on their Mac, RarMachine will be a breathe of fresh air.

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RAR for Mac is from the same developer who brought you WinRAR for Mac but of course, it isn't called WinRAR for Mac because it's a Mac and not a Windows application. RAR is a powerful archive manager. It can back up your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. The application not only includes support for extracting virtually any kind of file compression format, it also boasts a no-nonsense approach to reducing file sizes.

When you download RAR, you might be confused by the fact that it's just a folder of files. This is because there is no graphical user interface for RAR. It works only via the command line using Terminal so if you've got no experience of using Terminal, then you're going to be a bit stranded. If you're willing to learn however, here's how to do it...

Place the files in any folder on your hard drive, and run the utility by typing in the full path to the application (e.g. to run from the current directory, type "./rar" or "./unrar" followed by the appropriate parameters). If you get stuck, simply type the application name (RAR or UNRAR) without any parameters to see list of useful commands.

However, this will no doubt prove too complicated for most general users and considering the fact that you have to buy a license too for RAR, there are far better applications out there such as Zipeg which is both free and has a GUI thus making it much easier to use.

RAR is a powerful compression tool and the closest thing to WinRAR for Mac but if you don't know how to run programs from the Terminal, it won't be much use to you.

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Although there are now several other options out there, Stuffit Expander has certainly been around as long as any and is a powerful tool for anyone that works with multiple file formats. It's easy to use supporting the dragging and dropping of files into the Stuffit Expander drop box which instantly unarchives files for you.

Stuffit Expander supports over 30 different archive formats including StuffIt, RAR, 7zip, split and segmented archives. It can even be used to decompress archives encrypted with 512 and AES 256-bit protection. You should be aware however that Stuffit is quite a large application despite its simplicity - it installs a lot of components along with the program that some may find bloat their system somewhat.

Stuffit Expander is still a powerful and effective tool for handling almost every archive format out there.

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Express Zip Mac Features * Quickly create new zip files * Edit or extract existing zip files * Create or open encrypted zip files * Open and extract other archives including rar, iso, cab, 7z, tar and more * Convert archives to zip from other formats * Quickly zip common folders with the Express menu * Email zip files in two easy clicks * Burn archived files to CD/DVD for long term backup * Simple but powerful user interface with easy-to-use drag and drop functionality

Express Zip Mac File Compression Software is easy-to-use. Easily create, edit, manage and extract zipped files and folders on OS X. Zip/compress to reduce file size for email transmission or save hard drive disc space when archiving.

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UnRarX is very easy to use. Simply drag and drop RAR files onto the UnRarX interface and your files will be automatically unzipped. The extracting process appears in the main section of the UnRarX interface to indicate the progress of the extraction.

The main controls for UnRarX are in the top-right of the main interface. These functions allow you to browse for a file, extract files and test files to see whether they are corrupt. If your file is password protected, just press the 'password' button and enter it to open and extract the archive.

You may encounter a few problems depending on your file type. If you receive a CRC error, it's likely that one of your RAR archives is corrupted. Also, if you experience a "UnRarX cannot extract archive" error message, try re-directing the output volume to your desktop instead of File Directory. These little glitches can make UnRarX a bit tricky for beginners but most people should experience fre problems.

Unfortunately there seems to be very little developer support for UnRarX although there is a support page with links to a forum and bug report page, where you may be able to find help with problems you're having. Note as well that UnRarX only unarchives RAR files - it won't create them for you.

UnRarX is one of the closest things to WinRAR on Mac for unzipping RAR archives.

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Simple Comic looks to simplify reading comics on your Mac. We like the simple interface of the application and how easy it is to navigate between pages.

Once you've opened up the comic you want to read you can have it centered and show two pages at once. There's a scrollbar at the bottom of the interface to browse through pages.

It shows thumbnails of pages to avoid you having to go back and forth in your comic.

Luckily, the program supports most comic book formats you find on the Internet so you'll be able to enjoy the most popular comics.

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The p7zip archiver is one of the most powerful compression tools out there for Macs. Unfortunately, it doesn't haven't a user interface, which is where Ez7z comes in.

Ez7z allows you to decompress 7z, bzip2, gz, rar, tar, and zip files while allowing you to compress into 7z, zip, gz, tar, and bzip2 formats. Like p7zip, it also allows you to preview the contents of an archive without opening it, delete files from an archive without opening it, process multiple files plus create, verify, and repair par2 files.

It works via a very simple drag-and-drop interface. Just drag your file into the white square in the main interface. Click 'Shrink', 'Expand', 'View', 'Delete', or PAR2 depending on what you want to do - then you're done! There are a few handy preferences too. For example, if you don't want Ez7z to be your default RAR archiver, you can de-select it. You can also enable multi-threading and define where you want files to be saved to.

Ez7z is an ideal solution for all those who need a powerful but simple decompression tool for Mac, or those who need a user interface for p7zip.

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StuffIt Deluxe is the most advanced version of Stuffit yet allowing you to browse and preview archives before taking action and selectively extract just the files you want. StuffIt Deluxe can even browse encoded archives and compressed tarball files with no need to decompress it first. Stuffit Deluxe is particularly useful for those Mac users that need to send archives to Windows users because archives are free of any extraneous Mac data that might affect opening on Windows.

To preview archives before decompressing, you can use the StuffIt Quick Look plugin (which requires at least OS X 10.5 to work) and preview contents in Finder. The same goes for archives in Apple Mail and even TimeMachine archives. Stuffit Deluxe has also been especially designed with images in mind as it includes special preview plugins for images in iPhoto and Aperture. It allows you to archive huge collections to save disk space but still allow you to upload them to the internet.

Apart from archiving, Stuffit Deluxe also features many bonus elements. One is that it can create disk images in a few easy steps using MagicMenu or the StuffIt Contextual Menu. A handy feature called DropStuff also allows you to create drop zones with set preferences so that you can zip or decompress archives using the same settings everytime. In addition to this, there is a backup scheduler, integration with MacFUSE and an mini-install creator called SEA Maker that allows you to create your own installers.

Stuffit Deluxe is the most advanced version of Stuffit to date. Whatever your compression needs, it's sure to handle them and more.

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Handling RAR files on Mac can be quite common, so you need a solution to extract them quickly and easily.

Open up your archive with the program and it will take care of the rest. It's most important feature is handling multi part archives, quite useful when you're expanding a file containing multiple video parts for example.

RAR Expander will also work with password protected files, but you'll have to make sure you remember your password before expanding.

While this is one of the most common formats you'll come across, it's a shame that the program doesn't let you expand other popular formats like Stuffit Expander does.

Users have also been known to prefer unRarX, which effectively restores corrupted archives, something that RAR Expander doesn't seem to handle.

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Springy integrates with Finder to make archiving as simple as drag and drop or through Springy’s Finder contextual menu. One thing I really like is that you can preview and browse archives before extracting them - very useful if you're dealing with big archives.
Extracting and compression is extremely quick and you can modify files within an archive just by double clicking.
Most major formats are supported including: ZIP, TAR, RAR, 7Z, PAX, CPIO, CPGZ, GZIP, BZIP2, UNIX Compress, SIT, JAR, DMG and ISO disk images.
Note that as an added bonus, you can also create disk images with it as well. The only problem I had was with the initial installation. Springy advises you to drag the Springy application to a Contextual Menu Items folder.
However, every time I did this, it just opened my downloads folder instead.
Springy is a powerful and easily accessible archiver that will be a breathe of fresh air to those tired of StuffIt.

Download Springy 1.6.1 in Softonic