Power Software for Mac

Biker Joe said:

Don't know if this has been asked as my search did not show anything much.

Does anyone know of a power software program that works with Mac? I have a Powertap and find that the Saris software is less than stellar. I don't own a PC, otherwise I would have purchased Cycling Peaks. I know that CP runs on Mac with Parallels, but would prefer not to run windows at all.

Thanks
Joe

I don't know of anything else, but I know there is a pretty hot thread on bikeforums.net. I can't find it right now, but I know there is one.

James

Biker Joe said:

Don't know if this has been asked as my search did not show anything much.

Does anyone know of a power software program that works with Mac? I have a Powertap and find that the Saris software is less than stellar. I don't own a PC, otherwise I would have purchased Cycling Peaks. I know that CP runs on Mac with Parallels, but would prefer not to run windows at all.

Thanks
Joe

If you don't want to run Parallels and don't care for PowerAgent you might want to take a look at: goldencheetah.orgdownload.htmlOpen ↗ it
s freeware, and runs native on a Mac. I used an earlier version and its features were pretty limited, but I understand they've added a lot to this release.

You should also check out RaceDay which also runs native on a Mac: physfarm.comtechOpen ↗ and was developed by Dr. Philip Skiba a regular on the Google Wattage group.

I ran WKO+ via Parallels and Windows XP on a powerbook for a while, it worked fine once I managed the driver issues and managed to get the XP side to see my PowerTap download cradle. But if you don't want to go that route you should check out the links above.

-Dave

Decided to give in.....installed Parallels and Vista. Downloaded the WKO+ and it works like a dream. I have windows running in coherence mode. I placed a WKO+ icon on the Mac desktop, when i click on it WKO+ opens in a window on the Mac OS desktop. Very cool.

Thanks all.

Biker Joe said:

Decided to give in.....installed Parallels and Vista. Downloaded the WKO+ and it works like a dream. I have windows running in coherence mode. I placed a WKO+ icon on the Mac desktop, when i click on it WKO+ opens in a window on the Mac OS desktop. Very cool.

Thanks all.

I do something very similar. Wouldn't it be nice if the WKO+ guys started supporting Macs natively? I would even completely repurchase the product if this was to happen.

mikeyp123 said:

Wouldn't it be nice if the WKO+ guys started supporting Macs natively?

Are you willing to pay $1000 for the software? That's probably what it would take, since there are ~10x as many Windows users as there are Mac users, and the Windows version sells for $100.

acoggan said:

Are you willing to pay $1000 for the software? That's probably what it would take, since there are ~10x as many Windows users as there are Mac users, and the Windows version sells for $100.

Would this really be true?

From what my software developer friends tell me, porting the Windows version to the Intel Mac is relatively painless. There are many software applications that are not mainstreet that have been made available to both platforms and do not sell for 10X the price.

What you are saying just does not seem to make sense.
Thanks

Biker Joe said:

Would this really be true?

From what my software developer friends tell me, porting the Windows version to the Intel Mac is relatively painless. There are many software applications that are not mainstreet that have been made available to both platforms and do not sell for 10X the price.

What you are saying just does not seem to make sense.
Thanks

Depends. In the least, the UI would have to be built up from scratch on the Mac. If the WKO+ engineers did a good job of encapsulating the logic behind the calculations, and they were done in C or C++, that should be easy to migrate. Mac development is done in Objective-C which is a super-set of C.

acoggan said:

Are you willing to pay $1000 for the software? That's probably what it would take, since there are ~10x as many Windows users as there are Mac users, and the Windows version sells for $100.

No I am not. I would $150. Having 10x as many PC users might not be the best way to figure out what the current (and future) demand is for a Mac product. How much does it cost to hire a couple Mac developers? $200k a year? You're already spending money on packaging and marketing the PC version. SO.. by my overly simplified calculations at $150, you'd need to sell ~1333 copies a year to cover costs.

Biker Joe said:

Would this really be true?

From what my software developer friends tell me, porting the Windows version to the Intel Mac is relatively painless. There are many software applications that are not mainstreet that have been made available to both platforms and do not sell for 10X the price.

What you are saying just does not seem to make sense.
Thanks

I wrote a lengthy reply yesterday, but I don't know where it went...

Anyway, I was simply using that as an example, to make the point that it is all about economics, and if Peaksware LLC thought they could turn a profit making a Mac-specific version of WKO+, it would already exist.

mikeyp123 said:

How much does it cost to hire a couple Mac developers? $200k a year? You're already spending money on packaging and marketing the PC version. SO.. by my overly simplified calculations at $150, you'd need to sell ~1333 copies a year to cover costs.

I don't think the market for powermeters, and hence aftermarket software, is as big as you seem to think it is...

I'm running WKO on a mac using crossover, which is a commercial front end for wine. This allows you to run WKO without having to purchase windows, and virtualization software. Crossover is 40 bucks.

A couple of caveats-- WKO loads fine with Crossover's installer, but the numbers on the charts won't display correctly without a simple hack. You have to use a native microsoft mscvrt.dll file-- which has to be copied the the cyclingpeaks directory. You also have to configure wine to run that file as native.

Caveat #2 -- wine currently has a very hard time handling serial-to-usb. There is supposedly a workaround, but it doesn't seem that too many people have gotten it to work for linux or mac (for any serial-to-usb application, not necessarily a power meter). For those who use Powertap or Garmin, there is an easy way around this issue-- just download to Garmin Training Center or to PowerAgent and export the files in the appropriately supported formats and import them into cyclingpeaks.

This brings me to a final observation-- it wouldn't be hard for cyclingpeaks to work with codeweavers to get WKO fully supported under Crossover. The .dll problem is easily remedied. Of course, the biggest issue has to do with fixing the download situation. This, though, should not require the level of resources required by fully porting WKO into native Mac code. As to market share, well it is not really forthright to suggest that Apple controls only @8% of the pc market, because the vast, vast, vast majority of wintel machines in that analysis are used in the enterprise setting. Apple sales in the home pc market, and especially with students using laptops are a fair amount higher. Those students who are switching to Macs, along with many others who've had positive experiences with iPods and iPhones are future customers.

Since switching to Mac, what has surprised me most are the number and quality of applications available at very reasonable prices (~$50). So, while I don't doubt when Andy says the company doesn't see profitability in offering the product to Mac users, I'm still a bit perplexed by it, particularly when an option like Wine would require NO rewriting of code.

If the application was written in something like Java to start with, it would work with some minor shifts to device access between the platforms I believe.

parawolf said:

If the application was written in something like Java to start with, it would work with some minor shifts to device access between the platforms I believe.

Once upon a time, Saris tried that approach. Rumor has it that they ended up eating $200k in development costs when they eventually ash-canned that version of their software and moved on to developing the current PowerAgent.

acoggan said:

Once upon a time, Saris tried that approach. Rumor has it that they ended up eating $200k in development costs when they eventually ash-canned that version of their software and moved on to developing the current PowerAgent.

That java version SUCKED! Buggy as all get-out. Their software still sucks, but at least it is operable.

Chalk up another for wanting a mac version of WKO+...

Training Peaks has shown interest in the market for the mac, but has not had the resources to dedicate to producing a mac specific platform.

Following a couple of threads on the wattage list on google groups, they elected instead to widen the product's user base by adding in the multi-sport functions they have been working on. Hence the shift from the name Cycling Peaks to Training Peaks...

From a resource management perspective, it makes sense to me. There are probably many more users to be gained by drawing in runners than there are drawing in more mac users given most of already have Parallels, VMWare, or other means of running PC apps anyway.

As for the interface, I would volunteer to code the UI myself as it isn't really that difficult or time consuming. The difficult part would be taking all the UI and making it functional...

I just dislike having to keep backups of the XP side of the machine...

I have tried reinstalling WKO to a on a new XP partition and my code never works, requiring a license fix. Change out your hard drive on the machine, same thing happens...these are my only true frustrations with WKO...