Review: Disco

Posted by Kiro on 04/1/07 in Applications, Fun & Unique, Utilities

We have given away Disco and featured it in a showdown but have yet to fully review the burn tool at Macapper. Disco is completely user-friendly and has an amazingly beautiful interface. Disco has some standout features. Spanning which allows you to burn large files or folders over a number of disks. Discography which allows you to index all of the files and folders on each of your disks with easy searching. It even includes multisession support for burning more than once to a disk. But perhaps it’s most famous feature is the smoke effect during burning sessions.

Disco’s Proud User Interface

In the current generation of software development that we live in, the guidelines for creating applications have changed. Applications don’t just focus on functionality anymore but feature a grand UI that is pleasing to the eye and exciting to use. We have come to know this trend as the Delicious Generation. Disco clearly falls into this style of tool. There has been a lot of controversy whether Disco is one of these apps and whether it is a full-fledged application or not.

Disco is an amazing application that does it’s job very well and is fun to use. The first thing you’ll notice when opening Disco is it’s uniquely small window. When you think about all of the disk-burning apps out there, you usually think of a big, white window with many buttons that control your burning speed or whether you want to write a Mac/PC compatible disk etc. For Disco, this simply isn’t the case. All you need to do, is drag the files you want to burn into the main window and Bam! Disco calculates the sizes and how many disks you will need to burn. Title the disk and press the shiny burn button. Then the fun begins.

Burning a Disk It smokes!
Once you hit the burn button and insert your disk, Disco makes a stunning smoke effect that pops right out of the top of the window. This smoke is very interactive allowing you to play with the it by moving your mouse through the smoke or (as I recently just learned this by accident) blowing into the microphone. This makes burning a large disk seem to happen quicker because ”time flies by when you’re having fun” right? Once your disk is finished, it will go through numerous verifications for file names and sizes and your disk is then finished and ready to be used.

Other Features
Disco is an outstanding disk-copying app, as well. Simply insert your original and hit the copy button, and Disco handles the rest. Just like burning, you’ll get the fancy smoke effect and the verifying step. Another hefty feature is the ability to turn your disks into disk images. This makes it easy for you to save the contents of your disk onto your computer whether it’s a CD or a DVD.

System Requirements

Disco is a Universal Binary, meaning that you can run it smoothly on an Intel or a Power PC Mac. You, of course, need a CD burner to burn your CDs and a Super Drive to burn DVDs. In order to get the smoke effect, you do need a fairly recent Mac with a reasonable graphics card but not to worry. With the recent release of Disco 1.0 the supported Mac list has grown. All of the other features will work perfectly otherwise.

Purchasing Disco

Disco sells for $29.95 USD and is available today! You can get 25% off the app with the coupon code “MacApper“. They have announced that within a year, you will see Disco on store shelves. This app is highly recommended for all Mac users. You may never want to go back to conventional disk burning again!

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11 Comment(s)

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Trevor said on

April 1st, 2007 at 8:14 am

Disco’s interface is a problem. It’s pretty and all but it tries to be a Unified app and a HUD Palette at the same time. Either be one or the other. The smoke effect is a nice touch. Very fun to play with. Thing was I tried 2 discs and it turned both of them into coasters =/!

Kiel said on

April 1st, 2007 at 9:56 am

I find this review hard to swallow. I feel i would be paying 30 for a smoke effect and a good, but not perfect, user interface.

I certainly cant imagine it being ‘highly recommended’

This review has changed my opinion of this blog.

William said on

April 1st, 2007 at 10:24 am

Kiel, Disco’s user interface is pretty much perfect for the simple task it does: Burning a disk. The smoke is a gimmick, yes, but it’s also something fun to do while you wait for your disk to burn.

Justin Laramee said on

April 1st, 2007 at 11:01 am

Seriously, I have a license and I almost never use it. It lacks many features of a good burning app.

30 bucks is WAY too much, considering that free alternatives exist and do the job better.

Anyway, I stick with Toast.

Jim said on

April 1st, 2007 at 11:35 am

Yeah, I have to question the motives and even whether or not the reviewer actually opened that app at all. Disco is an absolutely horrible little application with about the worst interface I can imagine for what it does. Lots of hidden garbage in a non-standard GUI. Sure it’s pretty, but after the first two times of using the app, do you really care?

The app costs a quarter of the amount of Toast, yet doesn’t have near that ratio of features. I like to have options with apps, but there are a half-dozen free apps that do what Disco does, and as many shareware apps that do more but cost the same.

Disco was/is the ultimate hype machine. My only hope is that the developers DO make money off it and spend it improving the app and adding more features. Lord knows I wouldn’t mind NOT giving my money to Roxio (or whoever will own Toast by the time I’m finished typing this comment).

Bruce Anderson said on

April 1st, 2007 at 12:35 pm

As I noted in an earlier comment (in the article about creating disc images) Disco uses MacOS X’s built-in burning system and is therefore limited in what it can really do.

Toast is the acme of disc burning tools for MacOS X. It can create Redbook-compliant audio CDs. It can create disc images which it can then mount in such a way as to make the system think physical media is mounted.

Disco is PRETTY, and that smoke is cool (assuming you’ve got a compatible graphics card) and if that’s all that matters to you, Disco is your app. I’ll stick with Toast. You get what you pay for.

Sherb said on

April 1st, 2007 at 4:40 pm

I would have to agree with the people saying $30 is too much, because it is. $14 was fine for this app, but $30 seems like a rip-off.

Michael said on

April 1st, 2007 at 8:44 pm

I use the free Burn app. Does everything I want it to do and completely free. May not look as nice as disco, but in this case, I take usability and price over a slick UI and smoke.

Jerry said on

April 2nd, 2007 at 4:52 pm

“You may never want to go back to conventional disk burning again!”

As far as I can tell, you open Disco, drop some files in, and click burn. That’s exactly what all the other burning apps do. This app is far from the revolution you make it out to be. In the web, content is king. In desktop applications, features are king. This app does more or less one thing, and while it does it well, there are many alternatives that do it just as good for less money. The authors of this site need to stop buying into the hype of these little independent apps, and start doing thorough reviews before posting them online.

Yohannes Wijaya said on

April 2nd, 2007 at 10:38 pm

after i got it from a macheist bundle, i rarely use it not because it’s hard to use, it’s the opposite. you end up guessing what disco will do if i drop that or this. the ui is too simple for my taste. i need an app that gives me more options to decide. i stick to my built-in disc utility

The Murph said on

April 3rd, 2007 at 12:51 pm

This is hyper-radical!