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October 16, 2006

software

Disco: The disc burning app Apple forgot

Posted Oct. 16, ’06, 10:00 AM PT by Pat Nakajima
Category | Software

DiscoThe makers of AppZapper (probably one of the best examples of how things should be on a Mac) are hard at work on their next application. It’s called Disco and it’s a disc burning utility. And just as AppZapper made uninstalling apps easy, perhaps even enjoyable, Disco promises to do the same for disc burning.

Scorching a bunch of ones and zeroes to a piece of plastic doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to software-inspired delight, but then again, neither does uninstalling an application and its related files. So what does Disco do to make your CD and DVD authoring tasks so entrancing?

First, it has the type of aesthetic appeal that us users of Mac can’t get enough of. Disco is to OS X as Gisele Bündchen is to OS X ads. Second, it seems to be as full featured as Toast, yet it has an interface no more confounding than a toaster. Finally, it has superfluous effects galore (that is, if your hardware can support it.) Just take a look at some of the videos on the development blog. This app is smooth. It even has smoke effects when burning a disc. And if your Mac has a built in mic, blowing into it will cause the smoke to react. Usually, this sort of visual pun wouldn’t fly with me, but it looks good enough that I’m onboard.

The beta hasn’t been released yet, but I’ll be keeping a watchful eye on the development blog for further news and keep you posted.


4 Comments

Moe said:

I'm very excited about this. I liked the polish and simplicity of AppZapper and I've been looking for a more elegant way to burn ISO files on OS X. I very much look forward to a stable version I can demo and (more than likely) purchase.

October 16, 2006 11:56 AM
mikelite said:

I don't get the enthusiasm for this product. The visual effects are neat, don't get me wrong, but they're also completely extraneous. It's cool and all, but people are wetting themselves over this...

October 17, 2006 12:00 PM
Moe said:

My enthusiasm has nothing to do with the extraneous effects. (I turned off the "zap" features in AppZapper.) If I want to burn an ISO file in OS X right now this is what I have to do:

1.Open Disk Utility.
2.Go to Verify Image
3.Choose my ISO
4.Ok out of the error message
5.Select the ISO image again.
6.Hit Burn Image

Rather than going through all this, Disco promises that I'll be able to simply drag, drop and burn my ISOs. This may not be a useful app for you, but it certainly is for me.

October 17, 2006 1:12 PM
Pat Nakajima Author Profile Page said:

I'm not going to lie. I'm excited for the extraneous special effects. It's sort of like that feeling you got when you first saw widgets make ripples in the dashboard.

While AppZapper added a much needed feature to my app arsenal, I'm looking forward to Disco for another reason: finesse. It's the painstaking consideration lavished upon the minutiae.

And it's the superfluous visual effects.

October 17, 2006 4:00 PM

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