Pica

Pica is a handy Mac OS X app that makes transferring large files way easier. You know how moving big file archives or videos can take forever? Well, Pica helps you split those files into smaller chunks, which means you can move them around faster!

Easy File Splitting

When you open Pica, you'll see a simple main window where you can choose to either split or merge files. If you're splitting, just point Pica to the file you want to work on and select how you want to split it. It's super straightforward!

Watch It Work!

You can keep an eye on the splitting process right in the same window. For smaller files, it’s quick! For example, I tested it with a 291MB MKV file and it split into 3 separate pieces in just seconds.

Larger Files and Performance

Now, when I tried processing a massive 16GB file on my iMac (which has a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 6GB of RAM), things got a bit tricky. Pica used up more than 2GB of RAM, causing my computer to freeze for a bit. So keep that in mind if you're working with really big files!

Easier Transfers

The cool thing about Pica is that once it splits your file, it saves the smaller archives in their own folder next to the original file. This makes transferring data much quicker! After that, you can use Pica's merge function to put everything back together.

A Little Quirk

One small hiccup: when Pica creates archives, they come with a .plist file but don't keep the original format of the file. This means your system might not know what app to use for those .pica.merged archives right away.

Quick Fix

No worries though! If you manually type in the correct file extension, everything goes back to normal without any fuss.

Final Thoughts

To wrap things up, Pica is definitely a quick solution for splitting and merging files. Just be aware that some tweaks are needed for it to become an even more reliable tool!