Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Features, Reviews
Dissing Disco
Rory Prior has some not-so-nice things to say about Disco, and I agree with most of his assessment. While everyone else seems to be jumping on the Disco bandwagon, I'm hopping off. Disco is a CD/DVD burning app that positions itself as a viable, better-looking and much less expensive replacement for Roxio's Toast. After spending a week with Disco, I am once again hungry for Toast. Rory says Disco is the "triumph of eye candy over usability." That's a good start at what's wrong with it, but the much-hyped "eye candy" itself really proves the point that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To my eyes, this is one ugly app. Its looks actually make it less usable, in fact. Smoke screens and shooting flame effects don't impress me much when the app doesn't do what it is intended to do exceptionally well - and Disco really fails at that task. Disco is a triumph of is hype over deservedness. Let me add that I was one of the many who pre-ordered Disco when it first started it's viral marketing campaign. For $5 I'm not saying I didn't get my money's worth, but I wouldn't have purchased it at any price had I tried the beta demo before handing over the cash.
One of the first things that struck me is that the UI is inconsistent and confusing. The glossy black-and-gray translucent theme is only interesting to look at for the first 5 seconds of the first launch. After that I found myself staring at it and noticing how unappealing it really was. Thinking an app's UI is ugly normally wouldn't dissuade me from using it as long as the app performed well, but It took me a good minute to figure out how and at what point to name the disc I was about to burn, which is not a good sign. In fact, the very first disc I burned ended up being named "Untitled" because I forgot to name it at all. I wouldn't have forgotten if Disco had prompted me at some point or had a visually obvious place for me to have named it. But with all that translucent black and gray everything just looks muddy on my busy desktop and the title field just blends in with the rest of it.
Prior also says he's impressed by Disco's "simplicity and functionality." But I don't see it as being simplistic or functional - at least not in the ways I've come to expect from a media burning application. The second thing to strike me was that Disco didn't recognize my .toast image as an image and instead burned it as a straight data file. Once again, there was no obvious prompt at any point to alert me to exactly what kind of disk I was about to burn. The DMG file I tested was recognized properly and I suspect I could have renamed the .toast file to avoid the first issue, but I shouldn't have to. If Disco is going to compete with Toast in any meaningful way, it should at least recognize Toast images and know what to do with them.
The one feature I do like is the Discography function, which could be very helpful, although I will admit to not having even really played with it yet - but the Spandex feature for spanning data across multiple discs failed miserably for me every time, splitting up groups of data in odd ways, wasted a lot of disc space and didn't allow me to split a single file across multiple CDs.
Before I get flamed to high heaven, I am fully aware that Disco is currently in BETA and it's not a final release candidate. Some of my gripes may be addressed in future builds. The above isn't intended to be an in-depth review, either. But Disco toots its own horn the loudest about the user interface and that's the one feature that makes it hardest for me to use. The visual effects are impressive from a development standpoint but they seem to focus more on form and far less on function. Here's to hoping Disco dances its way into better shape before version 1.0.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
James said 10:10PM on 11-03-2006
Why is it whenever I think of Disco I think of Burn (http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/)? Maybe because they look a little similar, to me at least.
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Zeromus said 10:12PM on 11-03-2006
pftt. Toast blows. Disco works. Sure, it would be nice to have the option to turn off the visual wanking, but at the end of the day the app works great.
Drag in files, hit burn/image. Drag in iso/dmg, hit burn. That's all I need in a disk burning program, and for under a 1Mb download it's not bloated.
As for your .toast file whining, the sooner they are eliminated the better. Same goes for .sit and its variations.
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PixelNurse said 10:17PM on 11-03-2006
At last a note of dissent, I thought I was the only one. Disco is going to have to seriously raise its game if it is to compete with Toast or create enough distance between it and the very nice free alternatives.
Check out these free burning apps if you're in the mood for some freeware action...
Liquid CD - http://www.maconnect.ch/index.php?page=liquidcd&lang=en
Burn - http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net
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S said 10:18PM on 11-03-2006
I'm glad someone said it, I absolutely hate the Disco UI. The min/zoom/close buttons really irk me - they're completely nonstandard and even highlight individually.
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thomas said 10:41PM on 11-03-2006
I'm starting to think that you purposely write bone-headed entries to increase the number of comments you get.
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Adam Turetzky said 10:45PM on 11-03-2006
I'll agree with you whole-heartedly. This app, and a few others, seem to be from the same App hyping mafia of crap surrounding the "My Dream App" crew who seem to do little more than put pretty interfaces on already established open source projects and then charge $20 for them.
Disco is Burn with dancing baloney.
To get away from some others from this realm:
Xtorrent = BitRocket
Newsfire = Vienna
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Dave M. said 11:10PM on 11-03-2006
My problems with Disco is that it can't burn a .ISO image to a CD/DVD. Disco will instead simply burn the .ISO file to the CD/DVD. Not exactly what I had in mind.
I asked the developers about that, but got an ambiguous answer that didn't tell me if they were ever going to support burning .ISO images to CD/DVD's.
Also, I understand that the spandex thing is a little buggy currently. If a folder contains files that add up to a size bigger than the destination media size, spandex won't work properly. I haven't tested this myself since I don't feel like making a bunch of coasters.
I only paid $5 for it back when we didn't know what we were paying for, just that it was from the same group that brought us AppZapper. So at least I didn't pay too much for it.
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jhn said 11:20PM on 11-03-2006
I haven't needed anything beyond the Finder and Disk Utility in a long time. I don't see what you need a disk burning application for at all unless you're doing something super-specialized. Disk Utility can burn most images into CDs or DVDs with very little fuss. I've created several Linux install CDs and a few weird Windows installs that way, too.
I remember a Mac-using friend once asked me how to burn a data DVD. It just baffled him that all you have to do is copy the files onto it and then hit the little burn icon.
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Jamie Curmi said 11:22PM on 11-03-2006
I also have a copy of Disco. Showed to all the guys at work - they first said cool...then looked at the features...and then said "It doesn't do much more than the Finder". I also burnt a DVD and forgot to change the title (didn't actually see where to change it). The smoke was sort of cool, but it is within a noticeable square, and doesn't even go up to the top of the screen. The guys at work all said they'd stick with toast, and I'm afraid I agree.
The interface sort of looked cool at first, but now it just looks ugly and non-standard. Unfortunately, I think this is now the growing trend - and I blame Dashboard. :-(
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jhn said 11:26PM on 11-03-2006
Actually, I did find Toast handy once for mult-disc syncing.
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aazp said 11:40PM on 11-03-2006
I agree totally agree with Rory. Good devs, terrible app UI.
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Kirk said 11:58PM on 11-03-2006
Thomas, judging from the comments here, many people feel the way the poster did and the comments were hardly bone head. There appears to be serious issues with this piece of eye-candy laden shareware. Don't jump down people's throats for reporting their experiences with a new piece of software until you have reason to do so.
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Mark S said 12:06AM on 11-04-2006
Good grief it's beta still. Give them a chance. I've had very good results so far. Unfortunately, no smoke on my iMac G5.
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Phosphor said 12:16AM on 11-04-2006
"Let me add that I was one of the many who pre-ordered Disco when it first started it's viral marketing campaign."
That'll learn ya!
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Matthew Treder said 1:10AM on 11-04-2006
Bought it like the other zotters; was curious like the other zotters; am currently bemused like other zotters and at my zot-like tendencies. I never gambled a nickel in Reno. Oh, well, that was before MacZOT!....
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ZeFish said 1:21AM on 11-04-2006
I say you compare toast and other open source app. with Disco which is out (and still beta) for a week now! Give them a chance! And yes I could use free app. or the finder but I like to brake the routine and have a little smoke when I burn. Kinda make me smile :). Once you know it, I really like the way it works. For Example: Flickr, I was completely lost the first time I used it. Now I couldn't live without it. Disco is so simple to use and with all that. Disco is fun to use.
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systemsboy said 2:09AM on 11-04-2006
Also underwhelmed. I've gotten two coasters out of four burns. Not great odds and it leaves me gun shy to do more testing. Worse, Discography catalogs the failed burns, so I've got dupes of stuff that's not on disc, and there seems to be no way to edit the catalog. I like the IDEA of Disco — a beautiful app for an ugly task — but the implementation leaves much to be desired. For now I'm sticking with... Yup... Toast.
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Allan White said 2:20AM on 11-04-2006
Like others, I've been looking for a replacement for the expensive Roxio Toast. I was hoping Disco would fit the bill, but for my needs (data and DVD videos, including dual-layer) it seemed not to work.
It was not apparent from its minimalistic UI whether it was burning a data or UDF disc - resulting in a few coasters. I don't know if it can't do UDF, or simply didn't tell me, but I was underwhelmed.
Certainly not living up to the hype yet. I do like the concept, though, and also would like to see the file-tracking feature around. Meh.
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Tom Burns said 2:21AM on 11-04-2006
I appreciate the honesty of your review; I for one am sick to death of all the hand-wagging these guys have been getting.
I posted my version here, if anyone is bored and cares to peruse:
http://sanstelos.com/2006/11/04/disco-sucks/
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moog said 2:25AM on 11-04-2006
Tried it twice, got two coasters. Game over, I'm not interested anymore. Will wait for 1.0
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