[fribhey]

leicaman said:

I bought Toast 9 late 2007. The killer feature was a way to move files from my TiVO HD to my Mac to burn DVDs. I even bought the Blu-ray plug-in.

don't know how you pulled that off considering that Toast 9 was released in the middle of March 2008:
http://www.macworld..../03/toast9.html

it hasn't even been a full year and they are trying to milk more money out of their customers.... pretty pathetic.

[Steve_S]

reallycrazy said:

Gah. $80 upgrade fee for the minimal changes and bug fixes from Toast 9 last year?

There is only one other product I cna think of that started off as a great product, but then once it matured, it was pretty feature complete for what it did, and then just started throwing in stupid unrelated features as an excuse to charge high yearly upgrade fees. That product: StuffIt.

Yeah, I can't help but agree that they are just going for the yearly upgrade fee. On one hand, I like the pace of development, but I it just seems very obvious that this is a marketing strategy. A more reasonable upgrade fee would be in order if they are planning to continue the upgrades at this pace. I upgraded to version 8 from version 5. I felt no need to upgrade to 9 much less version 10. Maybe by version 12, it might be time to upgraded again. ;)

[oldmanjimmy]

As far as I have researched only Intel macs will process AVCHD video, so the system requirements of G4 or later are mis-leading. Unless Roxio figured out a way to make AVCHD run on power pc chips.

[pkay]

While I agree with most of the complaints about the steep upgrade fee, having skipped Toast 9 I feel that this version has enough for me to go for version 10. In fact, the Pro package (which is nothing more than a bundle of 3rd party software) is attractive to me since I was considering buying Fotomagico anyway. And maybe the other tools will prove useful in making soundtracks for video etc. I like Toast, and its deficiencies are annoyances at most. I wish they were EXPLICIT about the versions of the bundled programs in the Pro pack.
Jon Seff: Roxio's website certainly does not make it clear that a registered user gets the mail-in rebate discounted at purchase. Maybe there's another "exciting" email from Roxio in my SPAM box explaining that offer.

[hypnocat]

GAH! i just bought Toast 9 less than a month ago. i hope i don't have to shell out a full $70 to upgrade already...

[john-d]

I gather by the inclusion of Bias SoundSoap with Toast 10 that Roxio has abandoned development of CD Spin Doctor. :(

I've have both programs and found CD Spin Dr. to be much easier to use, getting good results quickly; SoundSoap: unintuitive and overkill.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get CD Spin Dr. 5 to actually work on my Intel Mac; it refuses to show a workable waveform after capture, thus eliminating the ability to define or Auto-define tracks. The program at least worked, albeit in a crashy fashion, on my G5.

[Jon Seff]

No, a new version of CD Spin Doctor is included with Toast and Toast Pro.

[john-d]

Thanks for the info, Jon. That's awesome news! It was a MacWorld how-to that got me addicted to CD Spin Doctor.

I have lots of jazz LPs that will, likely as not, never see the light of day as a CD or download.

[People_Eater]

pcharles said:

Maybe they do not want to be involved with illegal disk duplication. I am suggesting this was YOUR plan, but imagine if you can power a bunch of external drives from one computer.

That makes no sense. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for wanting to batch-burn several discs at a time, I make multiple copies of my own videos for clients. Musicians also might use it to make demo discs.

And if they "didn't want to be involved in illegal disc duplication," then why are they selling a disc burning and copying product that allows you to do exactly that? This is spurious reasoning. And to accuse someone you don't know on a forum of wanting to perform illegal activities, just because they mentioned a feature, is off-base.

I'm pretty upset with Roxio right now. I've never been able to get Toast 9 working properly, it was full of bugs. Now they want to charge nearly full-price to (hopefully) fix those bugs, and not add any serious new features?

[nikerr]

I'm lucky enough to be at MacWorld and check out the new upgrade for myself. Here are a few things I found out.
The upgrade price for Toast 10 is 59.99. You have to go the upgrade page at the roxio site. Otherwise the price is listed at 79.99 with the rebate. Toast 10 pro is 99.99 which is a discount of 50.00 off the list price. Apparently the site checks the Mac for a prevous version and then gives the lower price w/o having to mail it in.
There are a lot of new features but everyone will have to evaluate whether or not it is worth it to them.
Regular Toast 10 has;
dvd clip extraction;
audiobook creation;
BD plugin free if bought within the next month
AVCHD backup from camcorder
audio capture
Theres more features and I listed just a portion

Toast 10 pro has;
custom music;
sound improvement program;
HD photo editing/show creation;
BD plugin
These are the features that interest me. Roxio is offers the above programs individually but if you add it up the Toast pro is the better deal.

[filchescat]

1) Roxio messed up bad through their online ordering via digitalriver, diverting my order for a $99 upgrade to a $129 full purchase (which they later admitted to and refunded . . . 3 days later)
2) It took 2 1/2 days to get a download link and s/n that worked - they sent me 9.x first
3) After installing Toast 10 over Toast 9, my MacPro's two native internal ATA DVR's were found to be disabled. The USB and firewire DVR's connected to the MacPro still work fine The keyboard eject button causes screen eject icon to appear as normal, but the trays won't eject. The drives are still recognized via 'about this mac', so I know the ATA buss is active, but the drives are totally inoperable. When I emailed Roxio about this, I was told I should just run a Windows emulator because then the Windows driver would be installed and I could use the two drives fine within Windows. Roxio has not responded since I asked them why I should run windows after installing a Mac Roxio application and ignore tons of other Mac business software on the machine (go figure; where do the get these tech people?). When I boot from a 10.5.6 drive without Toast 10 installed, the internal ATA drives work normally , so I think it was a driver or some other bogus code installed by Toast 10 that did in my two drives. Bummer. Suggestions anyone?

[landdrin]

As far as I can gather Toast 10 and pro have a lot of new things. I agree that they may not be needed for recent buyers of Toast 9, but that doesn't mean that's true for everyone. I can see that the Pro version has added SoundSoap, SonicFire Pro, FotoMagico, and Lightzone. These are full programs which can be purchased alone. However for the price it seems that 10 is better even if you need only one of the new programs. Anyway if you just bought Toast 9 and the new features are not appealing enough then so be it. I myself could use the new programs and I don't think it is too much of an investment.

[wellre]

I can't think of many popular software programs that don't have an annual version. I know some seem more relevant than others though. Looking at Toast 10 there are some intriguing new features. I like the new audiobook program because I think that has been woefully overlooked. It will save me on getting a Kindle or some other specialized reader. I've also dramatically increased my online video viewing. It looks like the new program will save web clips and transfer them to portable players. With a new spin doctor and music creation there are some unique things here. YouTube has cracked down on music videos so the option of using custom music is more appealing.