Thanks, I think I must have just scanned the first post as I did not remember reading that. Looking forward to seeing the app.
Will the new app/platform import swim/bike/run workouts from Garmin or other sources?
My iPhone (used for SF linked to big screen) tells me I am on 12…5.4 with the message “Your software is up to date”.
So what does that mean?
Probably that it will not get iOS 14.
Follow link and scroll to the bottom for a list of devices compatible with iOS 14.
Has there been any testing conducted on Chromebooks (which support native Android apps to a certain extent)? Would be happy to help out there or test once released as for me slowly the Chromebooks have replaced the iPads and Macbooks we used to have. Now just on Linux for work and Chromebooks for the rest of the family… Have kept one iPad for Sufferfest though…
Likely the issue you’d run into is ChromeOS. It runs a kernel variant of Android, true, but Android apps for Chromebook are not “native” as I’m imagining you’re thinking of them. Plus with limited onboard storage and GPU processing (again, lack), your ability to download videos for smooth playback would be very limited, even if SUF did port the app for ChromeOS.
Lots of variance in Chromebooks, model dependent, but this is all generally true.
Why would it need a GPU to playback video? It’s not doing any rendering or calculations, it just needs to literally move data from storage to the display driver.
Or have I missed something?
Not a simple answer, but GPU can/does play a role in video playback, especially on something like a Chromebook. Where an OS has a GPU present, assuming the GPU has the right codec for the video file being crunched, the CPU can then hand off hardware decoding from the GPU to improve decoding, rendering, and playback. Where a GPU isn’t present - or older, or lacking - decoding and rendering of the video falls back to software decoding, which is CPU and cache/RAM intensive. Not necessarily a big deal for web streaming of lower-res or packeted, buffered files, which is more dependent on CPU, L-cache and RAM for buffering anyway, but all Chromebooks to date (even the Google high-end models) have suffered when rendering 1080p or 4K files - if 4k is even possible yet.
Very few if any Chromebooks prior to 2021 mounted a GPU or onboard, dedicated graphics processor. Most have to fall back to the integrated Intel coprocessor on the board, which for (most?) Chromebooks has been the Celeron CPU. Fine, but lower-end, and not really designed for graphics intensive applications. There’s a lot of news out this year about Chromebooks starting to incorporate dedicated GPUs - apparently largely AMD or NVIDIA discrete chipsets.
Full Disclosure - I break a lot of Chromebooks, but there are plenty of people smarter than me.
I apologize if this is a mess. I’m not the greatest explainer in the world, either.
**off topic **
Do you fancy trying to explain Blockchains, and how gpus are used 
Graphic Processing Units (GPU) are used to off-load ANY graphics processing and are used in some cases for cryptographic processing. However, the Sufferfest App has the ability to turn off GPU use in the Mac version as some Macs have VERY broken GPUs. That being said, GPUs greatly improve graphic display and rendering. Thus, in the Android OS/Chromebook, disabling the GPU may cause minor to major graphics display issues.
Actually GPUs can be used to off load general processing because they are programmable.
Blockchain: a computer controlled transaction ledger.
Want more detail?
Yes.
Nope. I know too much about it already.
The more I know, the less I like it. 
You are partially right and I know a fair bit more about it than you might think. But one thing that I see as fundamentally incorrect is the smooth playback argument: I’ve not yet seen a Chromebook (have some of the Mediatek and Intel Core variants from before 2021 as well as later models) and they run Android Apps like Netflix smoothly as well, with no noticable quality issues or hiccups in playback.
Unless Sufferfest has really gone all out on their UI and have built some gaming-like experience like the z-named compeition I struggle to see how Sufferfest would put any major requirements or constraints on the hardware. But we’ll wait and see!
I was actually mostly worried about the connectivity part, BT support in Linux (which ChromeOs effectively is) is still not at the levels we see in Windows or OSX and mainly wondering whether that will throw up any issues.
Exciting!! But any information on when will the new app be launched, or estimations?
If it’s ever going to be helpful to have them posted from the UK feel free to give me a shout.
We’re not allowed to get stuff from
Cuore but we can post to NZ from the UK 