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.
amen brother… you are so right.
this is one of the most overhyped and underwhelming pieces of software i have ever seen.
how about putting down the crack pipe developers and fix some of the bugs you have.
I think you’re overlooking a few things here…
First of, there are a lot of people for whom the OSX built in burning is just fine. So this app already is a huge improvement for them without spending the $99 for Toast. What is more, this app is beta. No reason to go and break it down, it’s the developers you should tell all of this to, not the whole world. The proper question you should ask yourself is ‘Do I want to let myself be used as a free beta-tester. That’s what more and more companies are doing at this time. And for an app like this, with a price point like this… Yup, I’m in. And I’m quite sure the NLMA review will be positive for many other reasons too.
Have you tried Burn as yet? GPL and does essentially the same thing as Toast.