Website: discoapp.com
When only in it's beta stages, I proudly gave Disco a five star rating this past December. It's an affordable, simple to use alternative to Roxio's Toast, boasting nearly all the disc burning features a casual user would never need. In addition to it's remarkable amount of features and level of simplicity, Disco has one of the most eloquent user interfaces available on any operating platform. If you know of the application, chances are it caught your eye with the smoke that emits from the application while you're burning. Unfortunately, at the time of the review that feature was not available to anyone with the Intel GMA950 Graphics Processor, leaving Mac mini and MacBook users in the dark.
With the 1.0 milestone, Disco has made a less capable version of Smoke available to the majority of modern Macs. It currently lacks full interaction on some of the less powerful Macs, but we are happy to see less people being left out. Despite this major feature now being common to the majority of users, Disco still retains some of its previous flaws. Its imaging and burning system is currently limited to IMG, ISO, DMG, BIN/CUE files, which can greatly hinder those migrating from other platforms. Support for other formats like Padus DiscJuggler's CDI/CDJ or MDF/MDS images is sorely lacking. For some, this will make the extra money for a different application worth spending.
Other lacking features are only noticeable if you are making your comparison to applications like Roxio's Toast and Popcorn. You will not find Disco to be the DVD authoring application you may have been hoping for, however it will properly burn VIDEO_TS folders already authored. Regardless of its not being an entire media burning suite, Disco makes itself worth every penny. Discography is the perfect companion for anyone who wants to keep their burning track record organized. Spanning, the ability to spread large files and folders across multiple DVDs and CDs, is also an ability so useful you'll find yourself missing when using other burning applications.
As of March 5th, 2007 the introductory price of USD $14.95 has ceased, and the full price of USD $29.95 is in effect. A 3 user family pack is available for USD $59.90, and is worth every penny. A free trial of seven burns is provided at the official Disco website, and a fantastic article on the history of the application was recently published on their blog. Disco being without a doubt one of the top applications to keep your eye on in 2007, it's safe to say we can expect nothing but the best from the team behind it in the future.Originally Published on The MacCast
