My use of Skype for podcasting was waning already, but the impending departure of Call Recorder suggests that any remaining resistance to abandoning Skype may be about to fade away. When I was at Macworld, I tried to use our shift from print to the Web to shake people out of using Microsoft Word as the writing tool of choice. Once one of your assumptions is invalidated, it’s an opportunity to revisit everything and make changes that might have previously been unthinkable. Since change is inevitable, you might as well look at the bright side.
AUDIO HIJACK PRO ALTERNATIVE FOR WINDOWS MAC
Call Recorder users can keep using it for now, but as soon as they buy a Mac that’s running Apple silicon, the jig is up. If one of your key tools is discontinued, or becomes incompatible with the next version of your operating system or the new hardware you just bought, you’re going to be forced to move eventually. And on the third attempt to break away, I finally did it.Ĭhoosing change is tough, but sometimes you don’t choose, and there’s no obvious benefit at the end of the process. The Logic learning curve was high, and I knew that in the short term I was going to be paying a large price in terms of productivity, but the potential for far greater productivity on the other side finally forced me to make the move. When I switched from editing podcasts in GarageBand to Logic Pro, it meant throwing away all the shortcuts and tricks and habits I’d built up over years in order to make the editing process as quick as possible. The potential benefit can’t be marginally better than what you’re doing now, it needs to be appreciably better, or that change will never happen. Choosing to swap out or modify a portion of your status quo rather than just stick with inertia is a big step.
It’s human nature to want to maintain a comfortable status quo once you’ve managed to find one. Remove the core tool from the bricolage of software, hardware, and mental calculation that forms a computer workflow, and you might end up never noticing-or the whole thing might collapse like a wobbly Jenga tower.įor most people, in most cases, change comes at a high cost. We rely on tools, and we build whole workflows around those tools. But I have kept Call Recorder running for every Skype call I make, sometimes as my primary recorder, more often as a backup. That distinction goes to Audio Hijack, which works with any app (not just Skype).
In fact, if I’m being honest, Call Recorder hasn’t been my primary audio-recording tool for years. As useful and easy as it was, it’s not as if there aren’t alternatives. On one level, the impending death of Call Recorder, a utility I’ve relied on for more than a decade, shouldn’t actually be a big deal.