One of the great things about roaming the expo at Macworld is stumbling upon a product you never thought about. Even better is sharing it with people who don't care, and may even get mad at you for doing so. The Hewlett-Packard pavilion was a lot like the company, large, organized, and boring—but without the spying on people—but at HP I found LightScribe.
Sure, you can scrawl on a disk, or make adhesive labels with an inkjet printer that won't ever jam a slot-loading drive, but wouldn't it be great if you could print on the discs directly? LightScribe drives laser a layer of chemicals on the label side of special discs, resulting in something that looks a lot like silkscreen work to me. Using hardware from companies like LaCie and software like Toast 8, the procedure is to burn, flip, and scribe—or whatever—and it just works! However, LightScribe has a few disadvantages, which made for entertaining questions.
Jade: I can't imagine Steve Jobs utilizing mad Sharpie skills on a "Keynote Greatest Hits" DVD, but I can see him using LightScribe. Has there been any effort to get LightScribe in Macs?
LS: We are in constant contact with Apple about adding LightScribe to Macs.
Jade: That means they've blown you off so far.
LS: I wouldn't say that.
Jade: That's okay, I will. So, DL DVDs are pretty common among Macs, but LightScribe doesn't do dual-layer. What's up with that?
LS: Our software and hardware partners determine how to implement LightScribe technology based upon customer demand.
Jade: I guess we'll see Blu-ray and HD-DVD using LightScribe around eternity then, but what about color? As much as I appreciate five more ways to color my world, what I would really like is labels printed in more than shades of gray.
LS: It is possible, and our chemists are working on it, but at this time we have nothing to announce.
Jade: Okay, thanks for putting up with me.
Opinions will vary, but I'd take silkscreen discs as a BTO option in my iMac.
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