Posted By Paul Kafasis on December 7th, 2011

Back in August, we mentioned we were working on a top-secret project with new hire Grant Farr. It’s been a long haul, but today we’re thrilled to be able to reveal the fruits of that work:

This is Piezo, our charmingly simple audio recorder. With Piezo, getting started recording audio on your Mac is a snap. Seconds after you open it up, you’ll be ready to record audio from any application. Piezo requires almost no configuration, and it’s a blast to use, with beautiful graphics and thoughtful interactions.

Using Piezo, you can record from almost any app on your Mac. Whether it’s web streams in Safari or music from services like Spotify and Rdio, you can record it with Piezo. Just select the desired source and press record to capture its audio. When needed, straightforward settings for recording name and format are also available. Piezo can even capture audio from audio devices. Hook up a microphone like a standard Apple iPhone headset, and you can record your own audio right into your Mac.

Raisons D’etre

Piezo exists to bring audio recording to the millions of customers in the Mac App Store. That’s right: Piezo marks the first Rogue Amoeba app available in the Mac App Store, and you can get it right now.

Due to the many restrictions Apple imposes, it’s taken us almost a year to get an app in the Mac App Store. Our award-winning recording tool Audio Hijack Pro has many features which rely on deep integration with Mac OS X, but Apple’s restrictions disallow this, preventing Audio Hijack Pro from appearing in the App Store. The streamlined Piezo, however, has been approved by Apple’s review team. This allows us to bring the power of recording any app to a wider audience¹.

In the process of making Piezo, we also realized it gave us a chance to simplify audio recording. While Audio Hijack Pro is incredibly powerful, it does have a bit of a learning curve. For truly simple recording, Piezo can’t be beat.

As part of that, we worked incredibly hard on Piezo’s interface, giving it an alluring retro-modern feel. Christa really got to sink her teeth into all the artwork, while Grant had fun with some new interactions like the time display. We’re delighted with the way Piezo looks, and we know you’ll love using it.

That’s a Wrap

By now, we hope you’re ready to try out Piezo. It’s cute and fun, and in addition to being easy to use, it’s easy on the wallet. How easy? Right now, Piezo costs an amazingly low $10.

Piezo is available for Mac OS X 10.6 and higher. As noted, Piezo is our very first Mac App Store app, which means you can purchase and download right through Apple’s App Store. Of course, we’ll always sell it directly as well. Whichever way you choose to buy, you can download Piezo first to take it for a test drive.

We think you’re going to love Piezo. If you have any questions or feedback, contact us directly. Otherwise, just enjoy!

Footnotes:

1. As far as our other apps making their way into the App Store, we don’t really have anything new to say right now. We’ll always sell our software directly, alongside any Mac App Store versions, so there should never be any concern when considering a purchase. ↩