Comments on: Sell with Sizzle, Sustain with Steak

By: Erik J. Barzeski

Erik J. Barzeski — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:23:28 +0000

Anyone coming to this entry from here should probably just move along. The post you just read (and that I just linked to) is full of inaccuracies and reads like the childish rant it is.

Erik J. Barzeski said on June 4, 2007:

In the end, at $14.95 or so, Disco is really just a buggier version of the Finder's or Disk Utility's burn capabilities with the addition of dangerous and obnoxious user interface design.

The post you came from called that "a positive review."

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:56:48 +0000

What I find funny, and what nobody has mentioned, is that many people probably would have paid $5 for the ability to have "smoke" on their windows as a separate extension. Disco wasn't out a week, and other people figured out how to attach the smoke to any given window, and therefore brought the value out from the depths of the app. If only the disco folks had done that to begin with...

By: CSSEdit 2.0: A Little Sizzle, A Lot of Steak | NSLog();

CSSEdit 2.0: A Little Sizzle, A Lot of Steak | NSLog(); — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:00:09 +0000

[...] P.S. The title is in reference to this entry. [...]

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:17:52 +0000

Jesper…, I feel like I'm following you around the interwebs but again I have to strongly disagree with you on this. There is a trust factor with software that handles data. My data. Erik, Rory Prior and others have pointed out clearly some major flaws with the handling of data in this application. The flaws tend to not be at the actual "bits on your hard-drive and CD" level (largely because they reused the Apple frameworks) but lie solely in the user interface. For instance the delete button that is way too close to the scroll bar in the file list is such a huge user interface flaw… I can't imagine hiring a person who couldn't notice an error like this when doing a design mock-up. These are not "beta" mistakes… look at all the time and effort they poured into the whiz-bang natural window effects… but they couldn't be bothered to make sure I don't accidently delete a file entry from my list of items to burn?

By: Reinvented Blog » Blog Archive » Disco Inferno

Reinvented Blog » Blog Archive » Disco Inferno — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 07:00:20 +0000

[...] Consistency is at the core of usability. Sure, you can present new ways of doing things and, by convention, they can be adopted by others and widely understood, but when you start messing around with stuff for no good reason, you’re beginning to go to far. If others follow this trend, by convention, then it really could snowball, but hopefully that’s not going to happen. I do think apps should look good and be a pleasure to use. Erik Barzeski (someone I followed when I was setting up this business) sums it up nicely. [...]

By: Michael Tsai - Blog - Disco, FlexTime, and the HIG

Michael Tsai - Blog - Disco, FlexTime, and the HIG — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:43:27 +0000

[...] Update: Paul Kafasis and Erik Barzeski discuss “The Delicious Generation.” [...]

By: Jesper

Jesper — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 15:09:44 +0000

In my opinion, Disco goes beyond "recycled beef grounds" by far. It *does* do it all with DiscRecording.framework, but you can't honestly say that there's not more to do than implement one or two API functions, or that everything using DiscRecording.framework is on equal footing with everything else. I would like Disco just as much if it didn't emit smoke, if it used standard UI widgets and if the motion sensor feedback simply displayed the "hey, calm down" text. I consider the flow that Disco presents solid and not something crutched up by visuals.

I think My Dream App is a much worse example of "money matters more than the end product" or "sizzle matters more than steak".