Be all you can be

The good folks over at Rogue Amoeba are moving one of their development projects into test phase. You may remember them for keeping that other mythical mac user in copious amounts of salt lick, and making some nifty audio apps.

This is a private beta, and applications for a place in the first pool of testers are open till next Wednesday.

The new software is code named AHT and there is already speculation as to what it is going to be.

If you like tinkering with new software that may just wipe out your entire machine, head on over to their site and fill out an application.

The smoke rises, but nothing's burning

The Apple Blog has an interesting review of Disco which has just gone 1.0. You'll remember that Disco went on sale while still in beta-test some months ago, creating a few raised eyebrows.

I've always understood that the purpose of a beta-test was to identify and fix bugs before a major software revision was released. According to the review, there is still no shortage of problems with this disc-burning app.

I don't think that developers selling software before it is ready for release is doing themselves or their customers any favours. In fact I think it casts a bit of a pall over the work of all small independent mac developers who are putting in the hard yards to release applications that work as they are supposed to and look good too.

Clearly a lot of hard work goes into building a good piece of software, and many people seem to think that Disco falls into this category, but I'm not one of them.