Recently, Apple launched their first MacBooks running with their own M1 processor with the brand new Big Sur macOS 11. These new machines have the possibility of running iOS apps on Mac for the first time. So Control app can be installed on a Mac. Have to say I was a bit nervous when thinking about this and I initially thought that Control users might be best served by not allowing it to be installed on a Mac.
But then the day came when I tried the app on an M1 MacBook Air and what do you know: it actually worked just fine.
It is by no means perfect. I can honestly say it is not even a particularly good Mac app. Some mouse gestures work painstakingly bad. But it works! You can do pretty much everything: Add a GPX or FIT file, add a map image, calibrate it and view the course. With iCloud syncing, it has all your courses from your iPhone or iPad.
We have quite a lot to improve here: The onboarding experience doesn’t make sense for the most part, there is route tracking with device -option displayed, buttons look weird, menu items & keyboard shortcuts are missing, etc. Overall, many things that look great on iOS just don’t make any sense on the Mac. But the mouse support we did for the iPad version earlier this year has now paid off -at least a little.
So the Control app is indeed downloadable and installable on Mac App Store now. Click that link or search it with the App Store app on your M1 Mac.
Kind of accidentally Apple opened our path on the Mac already, and to be honest, I am excited about this. There have been many people in the past who have asked for QuickRoute for the Mac. If you have an M1 Mac, this is very close to it. This will be our first & worst Mac version, we will definitely work on making this experience better during this winter.
