How to burn a CD to ashes using Mac OS

The Apple Hype unleashed part 1: How to burn a CD to ashes.

My girlfriend frankly doesn't know a thing about computer technology. And she's not very interested in that, too. She's in medicine and doesn't need all that stuff. That's why she owns an Apple iBook and and iPhone. Sounds logical, deosn't it? It's because of all the nice design, the nice apps, all this stuff. And: It's far more intuitive than the ugly windows boxes! Well, she left her "old" (3 years old) iBook in my flat, and as a notorious person I gave it a try. Since Mac OS is THE OS that everybody is supposed to understand (while Windows is far too complicated) I just wanted to find out how Mac OS (Snow Leopard) feels and started testing some stuff.

Let's start with something simple, such as copying a CD-ROM. I just got some funny stuff from a colleague of mine, and tried the best to copy this CD with the MacBook. Should be easy, intuitive, nothing to worry about. After hitting the CD symbol I found the "Burn to CD/DVD" somewhere. Sounded really easy. So I followed the instructions. Apple urged me to enter a blank CD. Sounded odd to me, since I would have expected this step after the source CD was read. Well: They wanted the blank CD right now. Which I frankly provided. And it started working. I was wondering whether the whole source CD was already cashed before or what he was doing. And it did what I had been afraid of: It burned a CD without any content, but the title of the CD to copy. Incredible. What a mess.

I looked at the Apple help, which provided the solution. You have to look for some "hard disk xxx tool", hidden far beneath some "service programs" folder, which provides functionality to draw an image from the CD. Sounds very logical to me. I mean I am a Software developer, of course I know what images are and what they're used for. But "normal" users with no affinity to computers? I can't belive it. So my first impression is:



  • Mac OS is far from being logical or easy to use
  • Maybe it's easier to use than Windows NT, but it's definitely not when compared to Windows 7 (in my eyes).
  • I would claim this to be a bug: Being able to burn a CD and creating an empty, finalized CD like this. This functionality makes no sense at all.
  • This is my first impression that all the Apple hype is for Apple nerds only. I'm sure I'll find further things... But go ahead, I don't want to draw anybody from spending more then twice for the same hardware and getting an OS which leaves questions. Fortunately you can set up Windows on those boxes now... ;-)


To make it clear: I'm far away from being a Windows Adept. I'd prefer open source such as Linux. But it's funny to me to see the OS of the "elite" and its severe failures.

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