Roxio Toast Titanium 8 ® - The Full Review, March 1st, 2007

Roxio Toast Titanium 8 ® - the Full Review
March 1st, 2007 - By Keith Benicek, Editor

There are something’s that are an institution for the Mac platform no matter what the OS version, or what the hardware platform is based on. Think about Macs ten or twelve years ago and today, and long time users think of those mainstay and necessary applications - Photoshop, Word, Works and Toast. Of course, we also reminisce of those frequent lock up and fatal crashes, and now we still dread the endless spinning beach balls and lockups. Some things never change, do they?

Just as our early Mac app favorites have matured, so has the most crucial authoring application for Mac of all time has – Toast Titanium, now at version 8. There is just one catch, Toast 8 will require that you are running OS X 10.4 or above, PPC or MacIntel platforms. Toast 8 also requires a G4, G5 or Intel processor.

So superior has Toast Titanium been, that any pretender to the authoring or burning throne has been evicted from the scene. Even the powerhouse Ahead software, creators of Nero for Windows, had once diddled around with a European only OS 9 Nero“ Burning version (it was terrible, I have a copy) and a secret early OS X version, has apparently been scared off by the supremacy of Toast for Mac. Even Apple’s own built-in “Burn”, found in barebones form in some Apple applications, is as rudimentary as you could get.

This new Roxio Toast 8“ Titanium version is again a big step forward in the continued maturing of the only authoring app you’ll ever need on your Mac. In all the previous recent versions of Toast and Jam, the intuitive ease of use has been it’s strongest point for most Mac users. But it hasn’t always been that way. I remember a very early version of Toast for OS 8., while it was still under the Adaptec name, which was hell to use. I would revert to my Windows PC to use Adaptec’s Easy CD Creator rather than struggle with that version of Toast. Well, gladly things changed and the Roxio Toast team is the main reason.

A few years ago Roxio became part of the Sonic Solutions authoring software powerhouse, and the already great still gets better. Roxio under Sonic’s helm, has evolved the PC platform Easy Media Creator into the best Windows authoring suite, and so it appears has Toast taken a turn into a suite of creative components. It even bares some family resemblance the new PC Easy Media Creator Suite 9, although considerable short on the number of creative components that EMC 9 has. Will the future of Toast be as high powered as EMC? Time may tell.

Click on most images to see enlarged

Roxio Easy Media Creator 9's suite home window.

Roxio's new Toast titanium 8 home window and they definetly bare a family resemblance.

An Overview –

Toast 8 has many authoring components, some tried and true, some newly integrated and some completely new to Mac users. So impressed were the masses at MWSF 2007, that it won "Best of Show".