M1 / Apple Silicon compatibility

My M1-based MacBook Air arrives next Wednesday and I’m very excited by the Geekbench scores that are emerging.

I’m assuming that Zwift had the DTK and tested Zwift on the A12 Apple Silicon, but I’m wondering aloud whether Zwift will work fine under Rosetta, and when we should expect a Universal Binary?

Also, given the significant boost in integrated graphics on the M1, should we expect Ultra High support on these new devices? Fingers crossed!!!

Was just about to post something similar… will most likely be buying one of these soon, choice is Intel or M1 - M1 is looking promising, provided apps are going to be native or emulate properly.

Zwift runs on iPads, which is ARM based already I believe? So the team at Zwift should be very familiar with the requirements.

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Be interesting to see what profile you get, and the performance. I’d expect Basic and maximum 1080p at this point, but at a decent frame rate. Zwift assign higher profiles manually.

Edit: that’s if it installs.

that’s if it installs.

We’ll find out on Wednesday!

iPads have always been ARM. The way Apple have been talking, it’s just a matter of flicking a switch in the Xcode project to create an Intel/Apple Silicon Universal Binary, or rely on Rosetta2 to do translate Intel to ARM, but as any developer knows “It’s Not That Simple” :wink:

I wonder if the iPad version of Zwift will run on the M1 under Big Sur?

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The current Zwift binary seems to be built for the x86_64 architecture only. (Oh dear, I still remember having to build universal binaries for the PowerPC/Intel migration…)

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if the keynote is anything to go by → there is backwards compatibility in Big Sur (called Rosetta 2) Similar to when Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel.

In theory (ha!) Existing applications (MacOS based) that are not compiled for native M1 will still run on the M1

It will be awesome to see if you can download the iPad version of Zwift onto an M1 Mac and see what you get!

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I will follow this. Really interested to hear about it. Especially graphics compared to Apple TV.

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Why would you want to compare Apple TV with a laptop costing at least five times as much? Putting together a PC to obliterate Apple TV graphics costs about £200.

I am OK with the Apple TV, but always liked the Mini when it worked. What OC at £200 would be so good? When I look at Intel Nuc with decent specs and Windows 10, the price is also going up.

Any old desktop with as little as a 4th gen i3 and GTX 1050 Ti or 1650 gets Ultra detail at 1440p and 60fps in most solo rides (30-40fps in group rides). Apple TV is Basic detail at 1080p* and 30fps.

*Even the ‘4K’ model renders Zwift in 1080p.

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Yes, OK, but I don’t want it bigger than the Mac Mini. I use it with the living room TV and store bike and trainer after every ride.
Not perfect, but as long as the teenagers are still home that is how it is.
Occasionally I have used my office desk top PC (with the GTX1650) and the graphics are much better of course.
I mean an Intel Nuc with windows and same specs as the Mini will be close in price and have a very good experience with the Mini for years.

Well yeah, physical size is the one thing you can’t really account for without spending big money. A proper graphics card is a certain minimum size, otherwise it costs an absolute fortune (in a laptop or NUC). If it’s worth several hundred pounds to you based on your setup etc, fair enough. :+1: I’d just get a long HDMI cable and run that each time instead.

Also planning to hopefully use a MacBook Air m1 (cheapest) with Zwift as my secondary setup when I don’t want to move my bike to in front of the TV/AppleTV. This will be instead of the iPad I’m currently using for this. Fingers crossed for it to work fine. I’ll probably pick it up on wednesday.

I have a the 13 inch mbp 8GB with the M1. I’m happy to report that the mac intel version of zwift runs perfectly! Everything runs quickly. I used Bluetooth for my trainer and HRM, but I see no reason why a ant+ dongle shouldn’t work. I was very impressed with the performance.

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@Shon_Hargis_USMES_RW Hello, running fine at what settings if I may ask? Thank you.

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I’m running at the default settings. I didn’t try to change anything. I will say that the computer wasn’t even warm after a 20 minute ride.

That’s really quite poor, as a starting point. Obviously Zwift need to programme the game to be fully compatible but those are stats you could beat with a £60 GT 1030.

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