Toasters and Coasters
He really really thought–and hoped–that the problem was user ignorance and not his expensive tools. After all, he’d been bragging to his wife that, though he’d never used the MacPro to burn a CD, with Apple, it just works.
Well, it just doesn’t. Today, I made four coasters.
I find I’m not the only one to discover with no small disappointment that there is no built-in way (as there was not on the PC but hey–it was a PC after all) to make an exact copy of a CD without going through iTunes or a third party app like Roxio, Toast or Nero for PC.
I dislike iTunes so (at least the version that was around a couple of years ago) that if it hadn’t been for that non-intuitive program I probably would have gone to the Mac side way back.
So I’ve given up and gone whimpering back to RecordNow freeware built into the ThinkPad. This is not a common need but I was determined I could make it work. Nope, not without more downloading trial and error for OS-X supplements.
Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.
I got confused for a minute – most of the blogs I read are craft blogs and I suddenly wondered if you’d taken up sewing when I saw the “coasters” line first.
Actually, you can make an exact copy.
You can use disk utility.
http://blog.smalldog.com/article/450/use-disk-utility-to-copy-cds-dvds
Or with screenshots:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/making_dvd_copies.html
There are also some freeware programs like LiquidCD and Burn that might work. I have not tried them personally.
I have found that Macs are very sensitive to the brand of blank CD’s that you use. They don’t like generics as a rule. Verbatim, Maxell and Taiyo Yuden always work well for me.
Put those coasters on a string and hang them in your garden to scare away birds!
I enjoy your blog, check mine out Gary