Comments on: Disco Review

By: 01

01 — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:05:27 +0000

Julian, the button in discography that you weren’t sure about indexs the current disc. Just thought you might want to know

By: Andrew Garrett’s Scroll of Emptiness » links for 2007-02-22

Andrew Garrett’s Scroll of Emptiness » links for 2007-02-22 — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:24:00 +0000

[...] Disco Review at The Apple Blog (tags: @action OSX software) [...]

By: Julian Bennett Holmes

Julian Bennett Holmes — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:40:32 +0000

Ah, that’s OK. Anyways, you’d think if we were getting a kickback I’d give it a bit better of a review, eh?

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:06:29 +0000

It’s not like we’re getting a kickback or anything.

Ah, fair enough - apologies for assuming the worst and thinking you’d be getting a cut from purchases made with the coupon code.

By: anon

anon — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 14:02:15 +0000

In addition to all of the comments above, it also should be noted that Disco does not support Disc at once (DAO), which tape traders rely upon.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:07:00 +0000

I have to say that this is the best app for people who just want to quickly burn things– and it’s a great no brainer interface for parents or those who are less technically savvy. Toast is indeed wonderful, but there are tons of features most people will never use. Disco is for the 90% who just want to burn DVDs and CDs.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:05:05 +0000

Hi,

I liked your post and just wanted to let you know I linked to it from my site. I look forwarding to checking out Disco for myself and seeing it in action. I have a feeling I will stick with Toast, but that smoke effect is pretty sweet.

By: Lonnie

Lonnie — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:41:33 +0000

Well we’re comparing Toast to Disco because, Disco lied to us . . . they said “Disco . . . we’re having Toast for breakfast.” If you didn’t notice they no longer use that tagline nor are they claiming to be a Toast killer. It was the Disco guys that said we weren’t going to need Toast anymore, we all bought . . . then we all were disapointed/sad/mad and complained about it. Now instead of addressing the lack of features, they just change the tag line.

By: Jim Dempsey

Jim Dempsey — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:41:05 +0000

Comparing Disco to Toast is like comparing iPhoto to Photoshop for image editing. They are two entirely different beasts. Toast has all the features of Disco (including Discography and Spanning) and MUCH more. It’s far and away the very best burning app available.

That being said, Disco offers little in the way of features that can’t be found in several disc burning shareware apps and even a few of the free ones.

It’s always nice to have options, and Disco certainly isn’t the worst disc burning app available… but it’s far from the best or even the one that offers the most value.

By: Julian Bennett Holmes

Julian Bennett Holmes — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:14:45 +0000

Jack: I understand what you mean about the coupon code at the end, but I though people who wanted to buy Disco would appreciate this. It’s not like we’re getting a kickback or anything.

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:07:48 +0000

Oops, that’s > not >, obviously (looked fine in the live preview).

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:06:02 +0000

I’m in the less impressed camp - Disco just doesn’t have any features beyond those built in to OS X, or free apps like Burn, excepting ‘discography’, which you can improve on by doing ls -al > my_burned_files.txt in the directory you just burned from.

(And, you know, it’s kind of hard to take a review seriously, even one as well put together and balanced as this one is, when it ends with “Use coupon code APPLEBLOG to get 25% off when you buy Disco.”!)

By: cheap junk

cheap junk — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:05:30 +0000

…with a marketing twist to it — not enough to add up. ’nuff said.

By: Julian Bennett Holmes

Julian Bennett Holmes — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:29:46 +0000

Phlipp: Thanks, that makes sense. But I’m still wondering why there’s any unused space on the first of two spanned discs…

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:24:52 +0000

scralpha, i couldn’t agree with you any more. i too paid only 5 bucks for it. and i couldn’t be any happier with the app. yes it lacks in features and what not, but i’m not mad at the appealing interface and ease of use. i mean, you get what you pay for, right?

By: scralpha

scralpha — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:04:25 +0000

I don’t really disagree with any of the above comments, but I do have one thing to add. I pre-bought Disco for 5 bucks because I fell victim to the hype. Turns out, for my simple needs it does the trick. And, I like the eye candy. It only costs $15 now. Toast, on the other hand, costs a whopping US$100. It’s a great program (I’ve heard) that does everything you could ask of it. BUT, it costs 20 times what I paid for Disco. Why shouldn’t it do alot more? People are comparing apples to oranges as far as I’m concerned. Use what you like. Eventually Disco will be complete, and for now, it does pretty much what it says it does. Why all the hate?

By: paul

paul — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:43:38 +0000

I used the beta, but not the final 1.0, have they improved disc spanning? When I tested it, it was terribly inefficient. In order to maintain a certain folder structure it would sometimes leave hundreds of megs of unused space on one disc, when it popped it out and asked for another.

I have to say that Toast is far superior in spanning. It can actually breakup a single file across multiple discs. This makes it better at using all the available space on a disc. It also is a necessity if you’re backing up a file that won’t fit on a single disc (like a large video).

By: Philipp

Philipp — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:30:37 +0000

‘Some other things are also unclear. For example, I’m still not sure why there are two different colored rings inside the disc burning progress bar:’

The darker one is the size of the data you’re burning in relation to the disk’s capacity and the lighter one is how much you’ve burned so far (also in relation to the capacity).

By: Lonnie

Lonnie — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:25:47 +0000

It’s simple marketing - AppZapper sold very well, they hyped the couple of guys that did it. They pre-sold the crap out of Disco, cause everyone thought they were going to make another cool app. Well it sucks. I own it, I never use it. The features are just plain lacking, there are a few FREE apps that do a better job than disco. Toast is still the best.

By: Phil Bowell

Phil Bowell — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:56:46 +0000

I like the idea behind Disco and its a nice interface for burning discs. But I have to disagree with you about the attention to detail. Yes they have done nice little bits in the design, like the disc burn % on the dock icon. But there are some pretty big bugs, which you highlighted and which I have experienced, which now its out of Beta should be gone. They are still there though, so a lot of attention to the detail is mis-placed, the functionality needs to have been dealt with over the eye-candy.

By: J Phill

J Phill — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:55:10 +0000

I just got Disco last week, and I like it alot simply because it’s so easy to use. I agree that it’s not quite crisp yet, but I like it alot.

By: DanMac

DanMac — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:41:49 +0000

looks mint but it think I’ll wait to try it until they work out the kinks in the next version…

By: mike

mike — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:32:35 +0000

Disco - Brought to you by the MacZot HypeMachine

By: Matt J

Matt J — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:28:09 +0000

Disco is over-hyped, has too few features, and does little more than OS X out of the box (This is mainly due to the fact that it uses the OS X burning engine). The only new feature that it brings to the table is discography, and it doesn’t seem very useful. I wouldn’t use it even if it was free.