Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, Open Source, Developer
LiveDiscKit
Moments before our Macworld 2008 interview with Paul Kafasis he told me about the unique way the demo CDs they were giving out worked. What's the main problem with software on CDs? Those apps are suspended in amber, frozen in time, and many other overused metaphors. The fine folks at Rogue Amoeba make living, breathing code. They don't stop updating it for a second, and they wanted to make sure that the app you installed off of that CD was the most up to date version available.Impossible, you say. Piffle! Not for Rogue Amoeba (that one celled organism is a determined little guy). They looked at the problem and thought of LiveDisc. LiveDisc is an application that is burnt onto the CD. This application points to the most recent versions of the actual app that you want the user to install (an Internet connection is required). A simple solution to a highly specific problem, which is why I like it so much.
Rogue Amoeba is now sharing LiveDisc with other devs in the form of LiveDiscKit, an open source plugin for Interface Builder. Simply tweak a few settings, point it at the right places, and you're set to press a large number of CDs which will never go out of date (CD pressing functionality is not included with LiveDiscKit), that is assuming CDs stick around for much longer.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ted said 5:28PM on 6-27-2008
Why bother with a disc that is just downloading it via the internet. Just keep your website up to date for your customers and they just download it without the disc. Plus it would be more environmentally friendly to not ship a disc in the first place..
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david said 6:03PM on 6-27-2008
I had the same thought. How does this make sense logistically? The only way it would is if the app was large and it were faster to have the majority on the CD and the updates sent out via the web. With the download speed that most people have these days, it is a whole lot faster to download even a large app rather than waiting for the mailing of a CD. Yeah, just keep your site up to date, and get a good download host and leave the physical copy out of the picture. IMHO.
Tony said 6:08PM on 6-27-2008
This is for handing out at conferences and such. Most of these apps have 30 days trials. So, rather than always updating the discs you burn to give away at a conference (MacWorld, for example) you just have one image that's always up to date.
People are more likely to try your software if you give them a disc, than if you simply hand them a flyer with a URL on it.
Ian said 5:38PM on 6-27-2008
It's thoughtful, but I wouldn't consider it revolutionary. They're just placing an update checker in the installer. If the version on the disc is out of date, it downloads the newer version.
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reallycrazyguy said 5:42PM on 6-27-2008
So, would this be considered anti-green software? The sole benefit of this is what, so people who can't even type in a URL from a flyer into Safari can put in a CD and double-click something instead to download and install their software.
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kevin Smit said 7:44PM on 6-27-2008
what a fancy way to hand out the URL to your website...
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LD said 6:47PM on 6-27-2008
I don't get it. What's so special about this?
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Jeffrey said 8:54PM on 6-27-2008
If you need to give me a CD to convince me to use your app:
1. Your app is not good enough
2. You need to fire your marketing team and/or web designer
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paul said 10:52PM on 6-27-2008
What if I want the older version of the app? I say boo to this idea.
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jasonrm said 12:46AM on 6-28-2008
"Out of 5000 CDs given out, no more than 300 were used - perhaps giving away CDs isn’t the best idea after all." - Rogue Amoeba
The point was not so much that this is best for all cases, just Rogue Amoeba giving back something that might be of use to other developers. For hardware developers I could see this a best of both worlds, you always get a driver, net connection or not, and if you do that the net, you get the latest.
The whole point of this was so that if they don't have a net connection they get something, and if there they do have the net, they get the latest. Front page news? No. But to developers trying to make a better user experience? I think it's a decent idea.
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Unregistered said 1:25AM on 6-28-2008
Hardly newsworthy , imho..
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Word. said 6:36AM on 6-28-2008
So they have basically made the url for an application into an icon? Why do you need a kit to make http shortcuts?
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