Archive for November 2006
What’s wrong with Disco
There has been a lot of viral marketing lately about the disc burning app ” Disco “ and I frankly fail to see what it’s all about. I purchased the app after it came out of public beta a short while ago. For 14$ I am almost starting to regret buying the app for it really has a long way to go before it has Toast for breakfast !
Here is a list of things that are whacky and is by no mean exhaustive.
- The custom UI distracts the user from figuring out what is where. I had a hell of a time figuring out how to name a disc.
- The UI asks you to insert a disc or drop files, but when you insert a non session disc it does not tell you that you cannot burn any more session to that disc, something that a disc burning app should do.
- There is no such thing as a primer or an explanation for what session are all about and what the three options when selected or unselected do to the disc that you burn. An absolute must as I would be annoyed by coasters.
- My first disc was burnt and the final message that came up on the app window was ” A coaster has been burnt “, no kidding. I was annoyed as hell. There was absolutely no detailed error message that told me what went wrong. I was burning this on a 20″ iMac and was not testing its sudden motion sensor.
- Imaging “DMG in ~ Desktop” – what the hell does that mean, and what are the other two options. What am I supposed to set them at?
- Disc types, what are they all about. I want to burn discs, audio, video and the like, not decide on what file formats to burn them in. I want Disco to figure it out, aka Toast.
- Can I choose an external drive?
- The whole smoke thing actually adds to the problem. Reading through the comments on the Disco blog, one gets the feeling that the beta users have been wanting a smoke machine rather than a disc burning app. It is nice that it can produce smoke but the disc burning issues have to be set right first.
- I would like a ” Test smoke ” button, so that I dont have to burn something just to see the cool smoke or fire or goo.
- Whats with the fixed burn speeds.
- Why does Disco not burn avi files to DVD format aka Toast?
- No progress indicator?
- Spandex, has a lot of things wrong with it. To cut a long story short, it doesnt seem to be working. I am unable to span large files. An explanation or an assessment of the files when dropped on Disco to tell me whether or not they can be spanned would be nice.
- Discography. Oh boy I love this. Its a great tool. Shame that it doesnt work. I have burnt 6 discs, but cannot look through the files. I tried typing in the names of the files but nothing shows up. The developers have to fix this soon.
Way to go befor having Toast for breakfast.
