Customer Reviews

Apple DVD Studio Pro 4 (Mac DVD) [OLD VERSION]

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DVD Studio Pro 4 is an excellent product, no doubt about it. For pro's or prosumers who want more options than the templates that iDVD offers, this is it. I won't go into technical detail on the product, as Apple's website makes this clear, but I will focus on the shortcomings of their tech support service.

Software and other things digital have become cheaper and cheaper over the past few years. But when a company offers "professional" software for a cheap price, in this case, DVD Studio Pro, you lose "professional" tech support.

Case in point: I created a fairly complex DVD in Studio Pro 4 with around 22 assets and 6 different menus. Yet still only 2.1 gig used, about 1/2 of what a dvd will hold. I've tried burning dvd's, but the program shuts down about 6% into the burn.

So I called tech support at Apple - 90 days free from purchase date. However, the tech support rep' said he could not help me, and informed me that I'd have to spend $199 for each instance of "diagnosis" for my problem (there is NO mention of this on the Apple Store website). He said it was like "going to the doctor without seeing the x-rays". This may be true, but I had a very simple symptom: I can't burn a dvd.

Next he told me that I can buy a year of tech support for $799. Ouch. Why don't they just sell the product for $1000?

Personally, I'd rather pay $1000 for a "professional" program and get outstanding tech support, like DigiDesign offers for ProTools, and Adobe offers for CS2. I was at a DigiDesign meeting a while back and many of the pro' engineers said they should sell ProTools for MORE money, to help balance the tech' support costs, and to keep the software "out of the hands of amatuers that need tech support for tutorials". This is a good point.

I am concerned that Apple did not make clear when I purchased the item the fact that a "professional application" (the Apple tech rep kept refering to it as such) would require me to purchase additional tech support. Similarly, the "Apple Care Service and Support Guide" that came with the software mentions nothing of $799 services. In fact, there are no prices given at all, and the only wording of anything monetary is "Buy one service and support plan...".

It's very frustrating when a company offers cheaper software, yet when it doesn't do the most basic thing you bought it for, you, the consumer, get charged for it.

Like I said, great product, beware of costly tech support.