First Impressions: Garmin Training Center for Mac
Jan 9th, 2007 | By Fredcaster | Category: GeneralThanks to listener Mike, I finally got my hands on the new Garmin Training Center for Macintosh this evening. Thanks are also due to Ryan at the Garmin booth at MacWorld.I haven’t been able to fully put it through its paces, but here are my comments so far:
As you can tell from the screen shot above, the Mac Training Center looks and feels very similar to the PC version, except with the quartz style of Mac OS X applications (note that some of the numbers were fuzzed out because I recently cleared all of the data out of the Edge and the only thing I had to upload was a recent ride with my 10-year-old daughter and the speeds would have embarassed me!). 😉
It has a halfway decent base map and I’m not clear yet how/when Garmin will provide a better map into the Mac, so I have to experiment with whether it might read some of my Garmin MapSource files from the PC. Also, I tried importing gpx and hst files but that didn’t work. According to the documentation, it will import tcx files but I have no idea how to create those.
UPDATE: Listener Tim emailed to tell me, “one of the things I just read on the Motionbased Blog is that to import your .HST files from the Windows version of Training Center requires you to upgrade your Windows Training Center to version 5.0. The Windows version 5.0 of training center supports the new .tcx file format that is also supported in the MAC OSX verison.” This is on the same CD with the Mac version so I just need to install it and give it a try. I will keep you all updated.
It’s nice to be able to get ride of that 10GB Boot Camp partition finally so I have to thank Garmin (and Mike) for that!
Remember, if you want a copy for yourself please send an email to thefredcast@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Garmin Mac Software’ and we’ll do what we can to get you a copy. Remember, this is first-come-first-served.
P.S. Have you seen the iPhone? WOW! This is the single coolest gizmo I’ve seen in a long time.
FYI to those having trouble importing data — you need to have a Forerunner or Edge plugged into your Mac before TrainingCenter will import anything.
FYI, GPS Visualizer (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/) is now able to draw maps and profiles from the new .tcx files, and my “splitter” utility for breaking a history file into individual runs has also been updated.
FYI, GPS Visualizer is now able to draw maps and profiles from the new .tcx files, and my “splitter” utility for breaking a history file into individual runs has also been updated.
The news about GPS Visualizer is huge for those of you who want excellent jpg maps and elevation profiles. This will make the entire process easier and smoother!
Another alternative to Garmin TC for the Mac is a new program called Ascent, which concentrates on decent map and other displays that animate and include heads-up displays of instantaneous activity data. See http://www.MontebelloSoftware.com for more information.
I’m amazed and happy to say that garmin products is of high quality albeit the price is also a bit high but it’s worth paying.