Tim Gaden30 October 2006, 11:25 PM
The much-hyped new optical media burning app for Mac, Disco, has just been released as a public beta. It couples simplicity and power with some serious eye-candy. Visualisations while you burn, anyone?
The much-hyped new optical media burning app for Mac, Disco, has just been released as a public beta. Made by the same people who brought you AppZapper, it makes a determined effort to wed simplicity of use and power with serious eye-candy. Burning DVDs has never been so easy or looked so good.
The app's preference pane provides a good grasp of the power under the bonnet.
It can burn in Mac HFS+, PC Joliet, UDF, ISO 9660 or the default Hybrid format. It can also erase rewritable media and handle VIDEO_TS burning.
Optionally, it will also save a disk image or ISO into the folder of your choice.
Further preferences allow you to enable its in-built, coaster-avoiding motion sensor and control how sessions are used.
The Discography feature keeps track of every file you burn. It can quickly find when a particular file was burnt and to which disc, even when it was last edited.
It is smart enough to tell you when you will need multiple discs to burn the files that you drag onto its interface.
Although it is flexible and powerful, it is the eye-candy that has drawn most attention in the previews of this release.
When it is burning it simulates real smoke (or goo, icy mist, purple haze, or steam). Here it is flaming away on my Desktop:
You can blow into your Mac's microphone to disperse the flames, or clear them away with the mouse. Beautiful.
The developer plans quick support for Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD when Apple introduces them.
You can try out the public beta for free (limited to three burns) or snap up the public beta for US$ 14.95 ($19.45) at
the developer's web site.