I’m very wary of the superlatives affixed to software titles. We have StuffIt “Deluxe”, Windows Vista “Ultimate” (ultimate indeed!), Nero “Professional” and Rammohan “Banaaraswaale”! Generally, they all tend to be bloated and resource hogs (except that last one there, perhaps). I prefer applications which are light on the system and cut out the extra fat wherever possible.

The Unarchiver, a small archive unpacker program in Mac OS X, abides by the textbook definition of just such an application. It can open ZIP, RAR, TAR, 7-zip, LhA and StuffIt files as well as those with some other extensions I’ve never even heard of before. It has never failed me so far and has successfully unpacked every single archive I’ve thrown at it till date.

I always like clean and uncluttered interfaces and this one sports one that is simple yet efficient. It exits automatically after the extraction is done and the RAM consumed while unpacking is less than 10 MB. You can also have it automatically delete archives after files have been extracted from them.

The Unarchiver is a must have for every Mac OS X user out there who has to deal with archives other than those of the ZIP variety. After all, why spend $80 on a “deluxe” app when you can get the same basic functionality for free and cut out all the unwanted bloat!