Remember the early windows days when you’d hop into DOS and run Memmaker? I felt like such a badass telling people about that as a kid. I still don’t really know what it did, but it felt awesome telling grown ups how to get a little bit more out of their system. Squeeze is a preference pane that fits into the same category. If I could have a favourite category, it’d be the “getting more out of your system” one.
What’s it do?
It squeezes the hell of out your files, and maximizes your hard drive space. Now, before you go getting your knickers all in a bunch, you should probably know that it’s using built in HFS technology that has shipped with 10.6. So, it’s essentially taking an Apple approved technology that’s available on the command line, and making it more intuitive for users.
The application takes a file or folder, runs compression in the background, then stores it away. If you need to use the file, OS X uncompresses it and lets you use it. The compression process is seamlessly integrated into the user experience, your files will continue to act just like they would have been had the compression not been run on them.
The Super Badass aspects
User determined folder compression is the best thing they could have done. Having the ability to line up which folder I want to squeeze, and letting me leave others out of the process is the best part of this application for me. They could have made it a painful experience for the user, but instead they took something that should be complicated, and made it user friendly. That’s application development at its best. Drag. Drop. Done.
The Downside
The major downside to the application is that it’s 10.6 only, but to be fair, it’s through no decision of the Latenitesoft team. The HFS compression tool were only introduced with 10.6, so they’re off the hook there. But, could you imagine just how badass it would be if the technology existed on older architectures?
The Downside is more of an Upside
With this downfall comes compatibility issues, but the developers seemed to have that covered as well. Should a drive be moved from a 10.6 machine and attached to a machine that’s 10.5 your files will be in hiding. You won’t be able to see them or access them. Don’t freak out though, your files will reappear when you attach the drive back to your 10.6 system.
You’d also assume that moving files across a network would be a major problem, but again, operating system as got you covered. The files are decompressed before they’re shipped across a network, sent to email, or moved to disks. The operating system makes sure the file is uncompressed and ready for use. Pretty damn amazing stuff.
Conclusions
This is the type of app that everyone can benefit from. It hides in the background, gets stuff done while you’re not using your cycles, and saves you hard drive space. It only costs a measly $9.99, and it’s probably worth a whole boat load more than that. Download Squeeze and try it out. It’s worth the coin.
