MacBook Pro First Impression

Equipment: MacBook Pro (2013 ?), OSX 10.8.5. Garmin HRM, Garmin Speed/Cadence Sensor. Kurt Kinetic Road Machine.

After three rides, I’m very impressed. No issues with connectivity, startup etc. I did notice on my ride this evening that several riders were moving very sporadically and even disappearing from the screen. This seemed to clear after the first lap so maybe a temporary Zwift system issue. However I’ve read sporadic rider comments from others.

Couple of items I would like to see:

  1. Volume control for sound effects. I would prefer to ride with iTunes and not the ambient Zwift sound effects. iTunes interface would be really cool.
  2. Headlamp feature for night riding would be a nice touch.
  3. Pop up tips for new riders during their first couple of laps (A toggle to turn tips on and off)
  4. Ive not been able to test to iPhone/iPad companion app yet but hope it has remote control capabilities - toggles, volume control etc. I understand that Apple controls the number of beta versions? Beta testers should have access to the supporting apps. Can you add the download to your site rather than App Store?
  5. I tried using AirPlay to connect to my flat screen via AppleTV but graphics were not smooth. Ended up connecting with Thunderbolt to HDMI. Looks fantastic.

Looking forward to more rides. Thanks for a great beta experience so far.

As I understand it the headlight becomes available with more graphics computing power. I’ve got a Mac Pro coming with a 3GB graphics card and I’ll report back if I remember.

I’m on Mac Pro 1,1 running Yosemite and 8800GT 512mb graphics card.  Night riding had no headlights.  Upgraded to GTX 660 Ti 2GB graphics card and head lights came on.  Rendering looks better too.

Very impressive on the Mac Pro 1,1 Huang! I was going to update my 1,1 to Yosemite and add a similar graphics card but I ran into a wall in getting it to stick and opted to just replace the whole thing.

My headlight didn’t come on automatically when I installed Zwift on the new one, but in updating my graphics profile file I was able to max out everything and keep 60FPS. 

I actually opted to REDUCE the foliage to 0.5 from 1 as there were so many trees that my rider was in the shade almost all of the time. While that is ideal in the real world, I can see things a little better in the sunlight.