Filed under: Software
Disco beta is out
Disco, the new burning software that's been blazing a name for itself, has entered a more or less public beta. Those who pre-ordered through a MacZOT that was featured not long ago should be receiving ticket numbers with which they can redeem a beta download, otherwise you can email beta [at] discoapp.com to see if Jasper Hauser and crew will randomly select you for a lucky download of your own.If you're interested in seeing more of this $14.95 piece of burning shareware check out the Disco blog for more screenshots and explanations on what the developers are shooting for. It's a pretty impressive app, both from feature and UI standpoints, and definitely worth a look if the Finder's burning abilities leave you wanting, while Toast's ridiculous 'discounted' price of $80 leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.
Thanks Nik

![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tobias said 10:36AM on 10-23-2006
I absolutely love Disco, I got a bunch of random podcast files and burned them just to test it out! The smoke is absolutely fantstic! This is the greatest app I have seen in my life!
Reply
John Williams said 10:42AM on 10-23-2006
I hope I get picked for the beta because I have extremely good beta testing skills.
Reply
Mr Lizard said 10:44AM on 10-23-2006
Slightly dissapointed that the smoke effect isn't supported on the Intel 950GMA chipset (that's MacBook and Intel Mac Mini users out), but hopeful that this feature will be added shortly.
As soon as I get home I'll be checking my inbox as I MacZotted up for this a while back.
Reply
mkummer said 11:08AM on 10-23-2006
How in h*ll can I find a PREORDER link on these pages. Dont they want to sell their stuff??
mk
Reply
bas said 11:41AM on 10-23-2006
It lakes some crucial features... audio burning, iso/img/cue/etc burning, disc erasing. Guess they dont agree because my comments are moderated on discoapp.com.
Ah well... it is still beta.
Reply
Ben C said 11:45AM on 10-23-2006
I don't get it? Why do I have to shell out $15 to burn a CD? Am I missing something here? Isn't CD burning considered a core feature to OS X?
Reply
mark said 12:03PM on 10-23-2006
What Ben C said... why is a friggin' CD-burning app being hyped so much?
IT'S A CD BURNING APP, GUYS.
Reply
Marcelo said 12:12PM on 10-23-2006
The team was great about getting me a beta! I didn't pay, but just sent an email, and they responded with a link to a .dmg about 30min later.
Reply
JaXX said 12:30PM on 10-23-2006
Don't forget the other great App made by the same persons called Checkout !
It's a small store managment program, from stock entries to account reporting with clientaddress book syncing and a multi user interface.
Gone Public Beta today too on http://www.checkoutapp.com
I met those guys at the Apple Expo back in septembre and they're really cool!
Reply
Jabberjaw said 12:40PM on 10-23-2006
You're obviously missing the point. It's a fun project that has some cool features and it's fun to use. The hype is over it's superbly designed and easy to use UI. I agree that it lacks some features. Here's hoping they can remedy them. As it stands, I wouldn't be able to recommend this application as a Toast replacement. Even though Toast is fairly bloated, this app is missing some basic functionality that I think is essential to making it a plausible alternative.
Reply
Herv S. said 1:05PM on 10-23-2006
Boys, for old and very well defined functions, the time is rather to migrate to free and open-source softwares: at least check Burn and SimplyBurns...
http://sourceforge.net/projects/burn-osx
http://simplyburns.berlios.de
Reply
Ben C said 1:50PM on 10-23-2006
re: "It's a fun project that has some cool features and it's fun to use. The hype is over it's superbly designed and easy to use UI."
You're right Jabberjaw, I am OBVIOUSLY missing the point. how fun is it to burn a frickin CD? It was fun back in 1998 when cd burners were the cool new toy on the block. Saying that "burning a cd is fun" is like saying saving a file to an external USB key is fun. It's BURNING A FRICKIN CD! How fun can it be? How well designed can a UI get to burn a cd? you have a list of files, hit the burn button and boom, you're done. sheesh, gimme a break! OmniGraffle, now that's a fun application. xcode, that's an extremely fun app if you like programming. but cd burning?!?!?!
Reply
moog said 2:36PM on 10-23-2006
Too much Diet Coke, Ben?
Reply
Don Perreault said 3:10PM on 10-23-2006
Ah, my comments were also deleted from the Disco website. All I did was ask why the smoke didn't work on my NEW Dual-Core Intel Xeon. OH Yea, I also mentioned that both discs I burned were coasters, very disappointing.
I am more disappointed in the fact that the developers delete comments that are not complimentary to Disco. Do they expect only compliments?
Reply
fibs said 4:24PM on 10-23-2006
I'm with the "this is no big deal camp"
I don't care if this thing dances an irish jig while blowing smoke rings while it burns a cd. This is old technology. There are many open source alternatives to things like Toast. Take cdrecord for instance (command line utility available through fink). I'm totally baffled as to why this is being hyped.. What am I missing, why is a cd burning application that blows smoke at all cool?
Reply
Nik Fletcher said 4:25PM on 10-23-2006
Don Perreault,
Whilst your comments may have been deleted from the Disco website....
1. It's a beta. 2. There are ways of sending Beta bug reports and feedback (email?) that are not the blog post and would probably help the developer more. 3. Did I mention it's a beta?
Reply
henrrrik said 5:32PM on 10-23-2006
I agree with Hervé. The days of charging for CD/DVD burning software are pretty much over.
Reply
Goobimama said 5:41PM on 10-23-2006
Disco is amazing! I love it, especially the burning smoke thing... I think I'm gonna go write some more CDs, just for kicks.
Reply