Ruby, a message to you

I accidentally found myself in posession of a .sit file and needed to download Stuffit Expander. So, like any normal person, I do a quick search on the old world wide web and get myself to the Smith Micro Stuffit landing page. I think it’s being served on a shared host with someone using RMagick and seeding Tropic Thunder torrents, because it takes forever to load.

A super quick scan of the page and I don’t see a “Download Stuffit Expander” link before I just click on “Which Stuffit is right for me?” I should have looked closer, because this page also takes another forever. But it loads, and I see “Stuffit Expander”, “Free”, “Macintosh” and click that… and eons pass… and I’m taken to a page about Stuffit Deluxe which is only $79.99.

Affirming my resolve, I click on “Stuffit Expander”, and cross my fingers. Sometime after the sun has swelled to engulf the Earth I find myself looking at the Stuffit Expander page. I finally get to click on something that says “Download” and “Free”… but wait…

After yet another slow page load, I’m asked if I’m sure I don’t want to really get Stuffit Standard (normal retail price of $49.99) for free… if only I complete “Just One Offer” from some other company (like Blockbuster or Real Networks, ugh). But no, seriously, I just want to uncompress this one file, so I fill out my name and email address and click “Submit”.

Then I’m told I’ve been sent an email. Great.

The email tells me that by clicking on the download link I’m agreeing to get spam from Smith Micro. Awesome. Whatever. That’s what email filtering’s for. I click the link. I’m taken to a page which says will redirect me shortly, but with the way their server behaves, I know I have a couple of minutes.

But the redirect comes, and I click on what I hope is the last link I need to… and the download begins.

Agreeing to the license twice, I unarchive the file, and promptly delete Stuffit Epander and the .dmg it came in.

Thanks Smith Micro. It only took 7 interactions with their website, and two license agreements before I got to uncompress an archive with a free utility that used to be a shining light in the Mac world. Not anymore. Next time someone sends me a .sit file, I’ll just ask them to recompress with something else.