SimplyBurns for Mac

Developer's on a looong hiatus from posting, I guess, because there's a new 64 bit version available at <https://sourceforge.net/projects/simplyburns/files/> (Don't know what's with this link, but if you paste it into a Safari window, it works.) Haven't had occasion to do any burning yet, but it DOES run in Catalina.

Doesn't work. Using Mac OSX High Sierra and an external Pioneer CD/DVD drive. Failed to rip or burn a single CD.

64 bit version on the way...Alpha available at <https://sourceforge.net/projects/simplyburns/files/SimplyBurns%2064bit%20Alpha%203> YAAAY!

Like quite a few Mac users, I found doing Finder burns of dual-layer DVDs for data backups becoming increasingly problematic. Eventually, it got to the point that it no longer mattered which brand of disc I tried or whether I used my mini’s built-in disc burner or an external one. Even trying slower burn speeds didn’t help. Single-layer DVDs? Usually no problem. But dual-layer ones eventually achieved unbroken solidarity in giving me upraised middle fingers every single time. Perusing Apple’s support forums offered little help. The problem appeared to be common, longstanding, associated with a wide variety of hardware/OS combinations, and largely unsolved, with no attempted fix working consistently or reliably for any significant number of users. So something finally occurred to me: What if the problem has something to do with the fact that I’m using the Finder for burning? Maybe I should try a dedicated burning application. Since I can be a cheap bastard, I decided to give first crack to freeware and chose the one with the most recent release date. That was SimplyBurns version 428. I’ve never looked back. Since I started using SimplyBurns, and only SimplyBurns, I’ve burned a little over 200 data discs (not all of them dual-layer DVDs, but most of them; sometimes a single-layer is enough) and experienced only two failures. And those were not failures to burn but failures to verify. (Yes, I always verify.) Bonus: Every one of those was achieved at full available burn speed. I have never once had to sacrifice burn speed for burn reliability. The dual-layer discs I’ve used are Verbatim DVD+R and Memorex DVD+R. The single-layer discs I’ve used are TDK DVD+R, Sony DVD-R, and Sony DVD+R. Since I abandoned Finder burns, I’ve moved from a Mac mini (Late 2009) to a Mac mini (Late 2014), from Mavericks to El Capitan, and to a newer external optical disc burner. But SimplyBurns continues to work like a champ. Not bad for an application that was last updated Oct. 28, 2011.

I use this for most of my burning. It's very easy to use, and it does a good job. There are some things it can't do, but I can't remember them at the moment - maybe burn bootable DVDs, or read bin/cue files? Anyway, one thing I have noticed is that, if I burn the same project over and over again, it'll start to behave a little strangely (for example, it'll burn a disc but not show a progress bar; instead, it just says "Medium: Busy" for the duration of the burn). Eventually it crashes. This is somewhere in the range of 15-18 consecutive burns. Quitting and relaunching returns it to normal behavior. (So does letting it crash.) Luckily I burn such a high volume of discs (30+) very infrequently, and quitting/relaunching such a lightweight program only takes a second. Still, it would be nice if something could be done about that.