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ultimate iDVD 4 easter egg!

B

bnemesis

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 31, 2003
111
0
i know that these forums are not for posting anything "illegal", but this is just too good, if you havent tried it yet.

You uncompress two files to your home directory. After that, if you have a mac with idvd 4 and no superdrive you can burn to an external drive OR save your project as an .img file.

I dont know the legality of the files, or how exactly they work, and I not telling where I got them. But I will say that IT WORKS PERFECTLY! My ibook has no superdrive, but yet i have an idvd project dumping to an image RIGHT NOW!
 
If you can't even drop a hint about the name of where you got them, I'm so not getting interested in this.

Well, maybe I will...

So - any hints ? :D

[EDIT] Ok, a Google on 'iDvd external drive' finds it easely enough....
 
Doraemon said:
But you do know what an easter egg in computers is, bnemesis?
Click to expand...

Now now, I'm sure it's not a "crack" -- it's got to be an intentional gift that they just don't advertise! :)

Personally, the most useful easter egg of all time has to be the whole 30-second forward skip on TiVo. Changes TV forever!
 
dang!!! just for confirmation, this means i can burn regular DVD player playable DVD (confused yet?) with iDVD on an external? (everyone keeps on talking about burning an image...)

so if i went out and picked up a FW DVD-R drive, i can use iDVD as if i had a superdrive??

been itching to buy some worthwhile toy... this might do it for me... :D
 
It works... I've been using it for about a week or so... it's nice... although it looks sorta silly to have two randomly named files in my home directory.
 
JackRipper said:
Obviously not.
Click to expand...

An easter egg in computer jargon is a hidden surprise or functionality that isnt advertised.
A crack is a piece of code that unlocks software that needs to be purchased to gain full funtionality.

The two files that you put in your home directory are 4k each. Not big enough to create the window that you get that prompts you to choose an external drive or if you want to save and an .img.

This seems like something those rascally apple engineers put in there on purpose.
 
alright, so the natural question now is...

who's got a recommendation on ext. DVD writer i should purchase? :D

lacie one looks nice - esp. with the full version of toast included. (i don't have toast.)
 
Ultimate iDVD 4 Easter Egg
London - March 25, 2004
A team of researchers from around the globe met in London to day to hunt down easter eggs in iLife '04. After six hours in the so-called "Situation Room", it was determined that the there was a massive easter egg contained in Apple's iDVD software. The group of researchers stumbled out from behind the locked doors of the room, and declared that they had determined that "iDVD burns DVDs". This revelation has sent Apple Computer's stock soaring to a record high of 300.034 USD per share.
 
If this is and "official" easter egg (ie. one that the iDVD team added with Apple's support, not one that some engineers snuck in), I can see why.

Wouldn't Apple want to extend the feature-set of thier iLife products if they were planning on charging $49? i think that they wanted to add burning to external drives as an idvd 4 feature however, it would become a nightmare for tech support. Numerous different drives and firewire chipsets. ARGH!
BUT, if burning to an external drive was added as an easter egg, then Apple wouldnt have to support it officially! Everyone wins.
 
This was announced by Steve Jobs himself in the MacWorld San Francisco keynote. He said that iDVD would be able to install and projects could be created on Macs without SuperDrives in iDVD 4. This was for people who wanted to create on certain machines and then send all their projects to one mac that was eqiupped with a DVD burner. You just can't burn from within iDVD.
 
dbauer said:
This was announced by Steve Jobs himself in the MacWorld San Francisco keynote. He said that iDVD would be able to install and projects could be created on Macs without SuperDrives in iDVD 4. This was for people who wanted to create on certain machines and then send all their projects to one mac that was eqiupped with a DVD burner. You just can't burn from within iDVD.
Click to expand...

but "this" lets non-SuperDrive equipped Macs to burn DVDs using iDVD as if external drive was a SuperDrive. what jobs said is exactly what you wrote - that iDVD can be used to make projects on non-SuperDrive equipped Macs and then moved over to a Mac that is SuperDrive equipped to burn the DVD. nothing about using an external or burning an image...

this has always been the case with iDVD - no burning without the SuperDrive. it used to be that you didn't get iDVD and couldn't use it unless you had a SuperDrive equipped Mac. now, with this hack, there's one less incentive to get SuperDrive. my guess would be that they will close this hole with the next iDVD and may start selling their own ext. DVD burner that works with iDVD. i highly doubt they will officially support this hack.

this is a hack, no doubt, it's just like dual monitoring hack in iBook. a feature that's been "hidden" (or crippled) by apple for the sake of marketing/product differentiation.

i sure hope apple won't close this because i might buy a DVD burner now... but i'd also like to be able to use iDVD in the future... (yeah, i know, i'm greedy, i want the best of both. :D)
 
question

so where is that home folder locates at exactly anyways....... I can't seem to find that exact location.
 
busasa said:
so where is that home folder locates at exactly anyways....... I can't seem to find that exact location.
Click to expand...

From the Finder, hit Shift+Apple+H
 
If I burn a .img with iDVD will it be smaller then saving my iDVD project as an Archive? Also, is there anyway to "reset" iDVD so it doesn't require those files in the home folder to burn?
 
This is decidedly not an announced feature. Also, I highly doubt Apple will sell external DVD burners, they've been out of the commodity attachment business for a while. Of course, that is unless they come up with some twist on DVD burning that I don't see. Like the iSight has several features you won't find on other webcams.

What makes the most sense from what I've read is this is a backdoor for easy testing for Apple. If you're doing testing on DVD-R drivers for your whole line of supported burners, it'd get old removing your internal optical drive all of the time. This lets you just change out your FireWire enclosure to test another drive.
 
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