The developers of RapidWeaver, Realmac, have just launched Squash 2 for Mac! As they put it, it is “The Easiest Way to Compress and Optimise Images for the Web.”, I completely agree with that statement.

It has a really simplistic and clean UI, which I’m a big fan of. And also it has a few very smart features.

How To Use Squash

You can either drag and drop images (or even whole folders), onto the application window or icon to compress the files. Or you can of course navigate to File, Open.

Then you get to see the animation, which has a nice sound effect to it, while it’s compressing the images. And after that it tells you how much space it saved, and then completes the specific output option you have set in your preferences. It’s as simple as that.

What Can It Do?

Squash can compress JPG, PNG, and GIF images without losing any image quality. So there’s really no drawbacks!

It can also convert PSD, RAW, and TIFF files into compressed JPG files as well. Which can be a huge lifesaver if you don’t fancy opening up Photoshop or Lightroom for example to simply export an image.

Then with the output of images, you can choose to either have it replace the original images with the compressed versions, or you can save separate copies. This is managed in the Preferences window, and it also let’s you choose a specific folder to save them into.

Another little extra is the ability to add a custom suffix to the image name, so for example you could be compressing a bunch of images, and you want to clearly know which ones have compressed versions. Just add something like “-compressed”, and then “Photo_0123.png” would get compressed, and saved as “Photo_0123-compressed.png”.

Finer Adjustments

If you want to refine the compression even more, you can select the JPEG quality you want to compress to. And there is also an option to have a slightly more compressed PNG format, but this will take a longer time to complete.

Why Should I Compress?

There are a bunch of reasons why you should compress your images, but here are a few:

• It saves space on your drive, or even cloud storage where space may not be hugely available.
• You can upload your files to places like Facebook and Twitter much faster.
• If your app uses a lot of images, then having all of these compressed, it will be faster to download, which means less bandwidth is being used.
• Your email attachments will be smaller, so they will load and send faster, and who wants huge emails anyway?
• Websites will load much faster with smaller images!

Examples

I had to do a few benchmarks on some images, to see what sort of compression I could get. So here is what I got:

• Andromeda Galaxy 5.3MB JPEG -> 2.2MB
• Qwiki Icon 857KB PNG -> 375KB / 327KB (Slower PNG Compression)
• Black Wallpaper 2.2MB JPEG -> 537Kb
• Outside Landscape 1.8MB JPEG -> 1.7MB
• Screenshot of Squash (Above) 105KB JPEG -> 57KB

Download

Now that I’m sure you want to check out Squash 2 for yourself, you can find more information on the RapidWeaver website, and buy Squash 2 from the Mac App Store!

And if you get there before the 28th November, you’ll benefit from their whopping 60% Off Launch deal.

Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Qwiki will be a whopping 50% off!

So if you’re unsure whether you want to try it out, or maybe you like a bit of a discount. Then this is your chance to get Qwiki, and bring Wikipedia to your Menu Bar! (and Touch Bar soon).

Check out the Qwiki website, and you can buy Qwiki on the Mac App Store.

My new MacBook Pro has arrived! So this is a sort of preliminary post, before my actual write up on what I think of it.

Spec

For starters, this is the configuration of my new Mac:

• 13″ MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
• 3.1GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5
• 8GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
• Intel Iris Graphics 550
• 256GB PCIe-based SSD

Name

The name you may of guessed already, is “Wrathion”. I started this very recently, in which all of my devices are named after Dragons in WoW. For a bit of back story, the Black Dragonflight were my favourite, until they became corrupted, until one little egg was rescued and is now the only uncorrupted Black Dragon. He is still a whelp (like my 13″ Mac), and is Black (sort of like my Space Grey Mac), so it sort of fitted!

Stickers

Yes, I’ve already put stickers on my Mac. Eight to be exact. I do plan on covering it even more, but I didn’t want to rush into anything!

Anyway, here’s a little GIF I made of my sticker situation:

Thoughts So Far

This MacBook is amazing, and actually a lot better than I thought. Also, something which may be unique, I love the new keyboard.

I’ll get on using my Mac, and pretty soon I’ll be writing a better piece on what I think about it.

iA Writer has just become version 4! It coms with some really impressive features, that definitely makes it more than just a basic text editor.

There’s better way to add images (with support for better captions), stress free tables with .csv file embeds, embedded text files, and all of these "content blocks" can be chained together! Which means you can have a book outline document, with references to the title page, individual chapters, etc. But within those chapters you could have references to images, or maybe even more text! The possibilities are endless, and I’m really impressed.

I was going to write a big article about this update, but I saw on the iA blog they have a super helpful video that explains everything!

Read the full article about iA Writer 4 on the iA Blog.

Stephen Hackett begins his monthly column on MacStories, with a really interesting article about where the been MacBook Pro fits in.

The current MacBook Pro line is a little bit of a mess. Even after brushing aside the last-generation machines that are still for sale, the current offerings are confusing. Both 15-inch models come with the Touch Bar, but only two of the three 13-inch models offered do.

That $1,499 non-Touch-Bar-but-still-in-the-new-skinny-case 13-inch MacBook Pro is what I’m typing on right now. It’s a great little laptop. The screen is gorgeous, battery life is great and it’s more than fast enough for what I need when I’m not in front of my 5K iMac.

You can clearly see Stephen has left his mark already, by quoting a piece from 2006.

Read the full post.

My app Qwiki received it’s second update the other day, and I’m really happy with the progress it’s making!

Here are the release notes for 1.2:

In the latest update there are things that make Qwiki a bit more of a polished product.

Including things like being able to set Qwiki to launch on startup (Which was a lot harder than expected), a slightly more "lit" icon (Brighter colours, bigger stroke, and a gradient), some extra accessibility support, and also some behind the scenes efficiency work (But we all know you don’t care about that).

One More Thing

Qwiki now supports every language Wikipedia does! Just select it in the Preferences window, and you’ll be reading articles in whatever language you select. I recommend trying out "Scots", that’s pretty funny!

P.S. TouchBar support coming in the next update!

As I said above, I’m working on adding some form of functionality for the TouchBar in the new MacBook Pro’s. Mine should arrive soon, so I can fully test that out and ship it to everyone! I also redesigned the website, which you can check out.

For now, you can buy Qwiki on the Mac App Store for £2.99.

Some great news, pointed out by John Voorhees at MacStories, you can now buy tvOS apps from your iOS devices or Mac!

It’s a feature that just makes sense, and I’m surprised it wasn’t available earlier.

Read the full post on MacStories.

Joe Rossignol has reported over at MacRumors, that the new MacBook Pros have already outsold their competitors for the current year.

Slice Intelligence says the new MacBook Pro accumulated more revenue from online orders during its first five days of availability than the Microsoft Surface Book, ASUS Chromebook Flip, Dell Inspiron 2-in-1, and Lenovo Yoga 900, based on e-receipt data from 12,979 online shoppers in the United States.

The new MacBook Pro generated over seven times the revenue that the 12-inch MacBook did over its first five days of availability, according to Slice Intelligence. If accurate, that means it took the new MacBook Pro just five days to accumulate 78% of all the revenue generated by the 12-inch MacBook since its April 2015 launch. – MacRumors

If this is true, I think it’s pretty impressive!

We want to provide you a detailed look at a new feature coming soon to Pokémon GO – Daily bonuses! Trainers will soon be able to receive a bonus for certain daily activities, including catching a Pokémon or visiting a PokéStop once a day. You’ll earn a larger bonus if you do this seven days in a row! – Pokémon GO Blog

This seems like a nice idea for continuing players, but most people have stopped playing now. So is this there idea to try and attract people back to the game?

Read the blog post for the exact details on the bonuses.

Coming from the Úll conference, a few developers worked on a small video, that will definitely make you laugh.

How do iPhone App developers feel about their reviews? For Úll 2016, We asked some of our friends to share their reviews

Find the video on Vimeo, and for more information about Úll, check out their website for 2017.