What is the best compression file format for files on a Mac?”
There are tons of compression formats available on the Mac. If you want compatibility with other platforms, you’re probably best off sticking with ZIP or RAR. Another good one is bzip2 which, similar to gzip, only compresses a single file (so tar it first). RAR tends to come up with slightly smaller archives than bzip2 but also runs slower. I just did some digging and found rzip which runs slower than bzip2 but compresses text (tested was a bunch of email) a fair bit better and binary (tested was a WAV file) slightly worse. There was also one comment that there is a bug in rzip. Personally, I’ll stick with zip (tends to repair better than rar in my experience) and bzip2 (or just gzip if I want something quick).
