Disco - Yet Another Mediocre CD Burning App?
This post was originally published in 2006.
macZOT! is selling pre-release copies of Disco, the mysterious upcoming application from Austin Sarner et al, authors of AppZapper. While I do not particularly care for Sarner for reasons that he would probably not wish me to publish, I do follow Mac software announcements closely and found the hoopla surrounding this particular product to be, well, dimwitted.
The macZOT! website has purposefully revealed next to nothing about Disco, publishing only a teaser screenshot that reveals nothing other than that it auto-updates and has a non-standard GUI. The text description on the page also mentions that
- It has 3d particle effects
- It can take advantage of the motion sensor on a laptop
- It can detect when you blow in the microphone
While this is purposefully vague, I’d say it’s not so vague if you’ve done some research. First, consider that Austin Sarner used to work for RadicalBreeze on the DiscBlaze program:
IM conversation with Austin Sarner on August 26, 2005
rgovostes: So what projects are you working on now
austinsarner@mac.com: contracting job
rgovostes: aha what on
austinsarner@mac.com: rewriting “DiscBlaze” in cocoa
(conversation truncated)
austinsarner@mac.com: the radical breeze guy is paying me 8k for this
rgovostes: nice
Knowing that Sarner has experience authoring a CD burner in Cocoa, the name “Disco” lends some credibility to the suggestion that this software deals with CD burning.
So what does that have to do with 3D particle effects and all that? Witnessing AppZapper’s superfluous use of visual effects for an extremely simple program, it’s no secret that Disco will feature its own eye-candy. What eye-candy could a CD burner have? Look closely at the teaser screenshot from the macZOT! website:
The last image shows the upper-right corner of a window. What’s important isn’t the window itself, but the fuzzy grey stuff above it - smoke created from “burning” the CD. Smoke is often simulated with particle systems, and it’s likely that these particles react when the computer thinks you’re blowing on the microphone, or if you tilt your MacBook.
If you ask me, Disco is just going to be another mediocre CD burning app disguised by smoke and mirrors.
Update (13 October 2006): The official announcement has been made on the Disco website confirming my guess, almost 2 months later.