News Topic: WinZip
News Source: citydog
ZIP, the story of a faded genius. Phil Katz did not want to pay for a compression software, so he simply wrote a better algorithm himself and released it for free. On April 14, 2000, he was found dead in a motel, only 37 years old, holding an empty bottle of alcohol at the time of his death. He left behind the zip algorithm, but did not leave a decent photograph.
How much space can the long-lost zip still occupy in your mind? Perhaps you have completely forgotten it.
I remember in 2001, just starting college, I read an article about Philip Katz in a computer magazine. It was then that I realized that zip had once been so 'unrivaled' and so widely used.
The founder of WinZip was Philip Katz. If you open any zip file with UltraEdit, you can see the letters 'PK' at the very beginning of the file. These are the initials of the name of the creator of the zip file format, Philip Katz.
Nineteen years ago, that is, in 1988, the internet was just beginning to take shape, and the most popular way to connect was using a telephone line to dial into service platforms built in people's homes—electronic bulletin board (BBS) systems for exchanging information. These systems were somewhat similar to today's forums and newsgroups, and since administrators would forward messages to each other, it became a massive information network (Huido Net).
Older internet enthusiasts may remember that even before the Internet, there were dozens of such BBS systems across China. The author of the famous word processing software WPS, Qiu Bojun, and the author of CCED, Zhu Chongjun, were both very famous individual administrators.
Because telephone line connections were painfully slow, transferring larger files through BBS was a miserable experience. Therefore, using file compression technology to reduce the size of files and to compress multiple files into one package became an essential skill for BBS users. In the American BBS of that time, a compression technology called ARC was relatively popular. Since it was developed by a commercial company, using this software required payment. At that time, Philip...Kaz is a young man who is addicted to BBS. Because he frequented BBS, he was very dissatisfied with the charges for ARC, so he developed a program called PKARC by himself. This program is fully compatible with ARC and can compress and decompress ARC files. As a result, many ARC users naturally switched to Philip Kaz's free software. In a fit of anger, the company that made ARC sued Philip Kaz, and the court naturally ruled that Philip Kaz was prohibited from continuing to develop and distribute PKARC. This ruling did not diminish Philip Kaz's fighting spirit; instead, it fueled his determination to fight ARC to the end. In the virtual world, freedom and equality are always the eternal pursuit of true programmers.
He gave up developing PKARC and vowed to write a compression software better than ARC to defeat it. This lawsuit led to the emergence of a programming genius and the creation of a file standard in the Internet era. A few weeks later, ZIP, which later dominated the entire BBS world and even the Internet world, made its first loud cry in Philip Kaz's hands!
Unexpectedly, when it appeared, it amazed everyone. This program called PKZIP can compress one or more files into a single file with the “.zip” extension, surpassing commercial software ARC in both compression ratio and speed. Kaz released PKZIP as free software, spreading it like a spark across major BBS systems throughout the United States. The number of users grew geometrically, and BBS administrators spontaneously converted files originally compressed in ARC format to ZIP format. With his genius mind and tenacious perseverance, Kaz rightfully defeated ARC, and the ARC company soon disappeared under the strong offensive of PKZIP. The legendary story of defeating a commercial company with free software quickly spread throughout the BBS world. Philip Kaz, as upright and skilled as a hero in the digital world, wielded his sword to uphold justice, robbed the rich to help the poor, and single-handedly raised the banner of compression software.
Thereafter, Kaz continued to develop and maintain PKZIP, which established and dominated the compression standard in the DOS era. With the advent of Windows, the emergence of WinZip, which used the compression algorithm created by Kaz, further made the ZIP format the standard for Internet transfer, and the ZIP compression format became the de facto standard for compressing documents.PKZIP and its "clone" Winzip became one of the most famous shareware programs in Internet history. The ZIP compression format also became the de facto standard for compressing documents, establishing a "ZIP dynasty" that dominated the Internet. Philip Katz contributed a great piece of shareware to the world, yet he himself almost gained no benefit from it! From the very beginning, ZIP was created to oppose the paid PKARC.
However, poor living habits and long-term enormous mental stress led to his tragic helplessness. On April 14, 2000, he died in a motel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. At the time of his death, he was still clutching a bottle of hard liquor.
Philip Katz never gained any benefit from ZIP. The result of sticking to his beliefs was often a destitute life. His poor personal life and the immense pressure of long-term software development led Katz to alcoholism, which ultimately ended his young life. He contributed a great piece of free software to the world, and more importantly, he created a popular compression format, yet he left this world too early.
Around the time of Philip Katz's death, ZIP's biggest competitor, WINRAR, was quietly rising. At that time, Winzip had long held the top position in the compression world, but with the emergence of version 2.7, WinRAR was growing stronger day by day, and the competition between the two became extremely fierce (Note: Like Winzip, RAR actually had a DOS version as early as the DOS era, but RAR could not compete with ARJ, which could only run via the command line in DOS. By the Windows era, it still could not withstand WinZip's attack, due to RAR's low compression ratio and slow speed. Additionally, the RAR compression format had long lacked support from other software, causing WinRAR to not become widely popular).
Regarding their performance at that time, Winzip compression only supported the ZIP format, while decompression supported ZIP, CAB, and several Internet commonly used formats such as TAR, GZip, UUencode, XXencode, BinHex, and MIME (showing WinZip's focus). ARJ, LHA, and ARC required corresponding plug-ins. However, WinZip was tightly integrated with Windows Explorer, such that the most common compression and decompression operations were integrated into the right-click menu, allowing compression and decompression to be easily accomplished with a right-click. It also added many user-friendly functions, such as email features, multi-part compression, and password encryption. So what could WinRAR rely on to compete with it?The answer lies in format support and functionality! WinRAR supports its own RAR and ZIP compression formats (that is, it can "be compatible" with ZIP), and decompression supports RAR, ZIP, CAB, ACE, ARJ, LHA, TAR, GZip, and UUE—basically all commonly used formats. In terms of interface, WinRAR is similar to WinZip, and in terms of functionality, it essentially has everything WinZip has, and even many features that are better and more powerful than WinZip. For instance, the unique "Repair archive" feature can even repair damaged ZIP files; the "Convert archive to SFX" function converts RAR and ZIP files into self-extracting archives. Unlike WinZip, this can be set directly during compression...taking the essence of the competitor and improving it—that is why WinRAR dares to challenge the leading brand in the compression world.
Perhaps at this point, you might ask: why doesn't ZIP support RAR? Wouldn't that make the competition 'fair'? But let me tell you: the ZIP format is open, and any compression software can use it for free, whereas RAR is a patented algorithm by RARLab, and any other software that wants to support the RAR format must pay a fee for a license. If WinZip wants to support RAR, it would have to pay RARLab, which is essentially feeding your hard-earned money to your competitor. We must understand: both WinZip and WinRAR are shareware. Chinese users are used to pirated versions of WinRAR and assume that RAR is the ultimate compression format. Thinking that all software worldwide should support RAR is simply an extremely absurd notion.
Although ZIP remains the standard format for compressed files, with WinRAR becoming increasingly powerful and its compatibility with ZIP and ISO image files, the once complacent WinZip has gradually started to be forgotten by users. Facing defeat, the former leading player made a final counterattack—WinZip 9.0. Released in 2004, WinZip 9.0 was the first software update by the WinZip company after two years since 2002, showing the determination behind WinZip's counterattack. This version brought many new features, such as: enhanced encryption standards, supporting 128-bit and 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) technology; support for 64-bit extensions; built-in advanced "Enhanced Deflate" compression algorithm, etc. All of this was specifically aimed at WinRAR 3.30, with the ambition to reclaim the throne of the compression world.Unfortunately, just like Michael Jordan's final appearance, maybe he really was too old, and it's hard for us to see the hero's former glory again.
WinZip 9.0 didn't add much support for compression formats; it still supports the original 18 compression formats, but it still does not support ISO, a very popular disk image format. The biggest issue is that it is not compatible with RAR, which has made many users stay away from it. In contrast, although WinRAR 3.30 currently supports only 15 compression formats, its compatibility with ZIP and support for ISO alone has tempted many long-time WinZip users.
After the failure of the final counterattack, in July 2005, WinZip was acquired by Vector Capital.
Perhaps the late Philip Katz never anticipated this day. As the company behind WinZip, which had been downloaded 140 million times and established the ZIP compression standard, it seemed they never considered making money from their technology (in fact, very few people paid the $29 registration fee after the WinZip trial period, so WinZip has never made much profit). It provided everyone with such a classic compression software. Once, it was splendid, but now its glory is hard to regain. Or, as the lyrics say: "Wanting to go back to the past, trying to let the story continue, at least so you won't leave me anymore…"
*Content source: cnBeat*
