Comments on: No Excuses: Tracking Your Fitness On OS X

By: amblin

amblin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:22:27 +0000

sorry-Polar user for 15 years, just switched to Garmin edge 705 and it rules if you have a Mac. Ascent is the new weapon of choice and I’m still playing with it- I’m a biker and the real photo mapping with play back looks more complete than RT. However, Rubi looks good and I like being able to compare different laps from different days on the same course. The ascent folks are due for an upgrade and I believe it will be the best yet.

By: amblin

amblin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:11:57 +0000

Max
Polar user for 15 years just switched to Ascent- biker -road and Mt. would like to here back from you as I find Ascent’s mapping to be great and I dont really see the big data crunching difference between Rubi vs Ascent- looking forward to your take – thnx, A

By: Won Fast

Won Fast — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:24:58 +0000

I’m actually looking more seriously at SportTracks for the Mac. It started out as a PC app but is getting more serious about Linux/OSX support lately using the Mono.NET pieces. The feature set is just so much greater than any of the four apps above it doesn’t compare.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:00:44 +0000

I was using Ascent, which is great. But today Rubitraclk offers the integration with the Ant Agent, the device used to sync with the Garmin 405. So I’m buying Rubitrack too. Will test both and will let you know.

Max

By: sixthof13

sixthof13 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:17:08 +0000

I’m wondering the same thing as comment #2 – are there any programs out there that let you download your data from the Polar F11 onto a Mac. I’m a new mac owner, and an old F11 user.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:16:08 +0000

Until rubiTrack supports the display of lap segments I dont see much point other than looking pretty. This combined with the lack of ability to send routes back to the GPS are deal breakers.

Keep your eyes on TrailRunner, the developer has been very active lately. The way it builds a list of track segments into dynamic routes is fantastic. The ability to send data back to the GPS is great.

I agree with the author that all of these have trade-offs and for me TR + GTC seem to be the winning combo. I believe that users will fall into two distinct categories — those who just want to log data and look at it with a pretty tool, and those who want to use their GPS’s as real training tools.

I admittedly have mostly been in the former group, but as I’ve started taking a more active interest in pushing myself and building strength/endurance my expectations for my GPS and supporting software tools has also shifted.

If you just want a pretty logbook rubiTrack is unbeatable.

If you want bidirectional data tranfer, route building, and lap/split segment data display then GTC + TrailRunner is the best thing going.

I’m a cyclist turned runner and I find Ascent wholly insufficient for my growing needs. It fell by the wayside a while back although I did enjoy using it for a while.

By: John Smith

John Smith — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:05:06 +0000

Wow. I’ve been using Ascent for a couple years, and hadn’t heard of rubiTrack. Great looking application! I’ll have to tinker a while.

Thanks for doing this review note. I originally used GTS and… it’s not so good ;-)

By: rumpole

rumpole — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:10:29 +0000

Polar does NOT work with macs. You need a third-party piece of software to get Polar HRMs to talk to OS X.

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:58:07 +0000

Very nice overview of this space. I had not seen rubiTrack and have to agree it is quite attractive.

By: Paunchiness

Paunchiness — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:45:47 +0000

I have an older Polar f11 HRM I wonder if any of these applications will actually work with that.