Nick Kokonas,
While I eagerly await for my pre-order to get shipped out to me, I went ahead and downloaded the just released iphone Swingbyte app last night and have a few comments, actually more like areas of improvement particularly around the setup golfer/clubs process. I would appreciate it if you could pass these suggestions onto the developers:
1) Wrist to ground does not have half inch intervals, only full inch intervals. For example, if i'm a 34.5" wrist to floor, i'm only able to select 34 or 35 in your user setup screen. In a real world fittings, wrist to floor is done in half inch intervals so there is value to it (i.e. check Mizuno, Ping, etc. etc. fitting charts). You really should be able to specify this measuremet in half inch intervals and any swing data analysis/algorithms within the app should be tweaked to allow for this.
2) In the Edit Clubs setup screen, the Lie measurement for Drivers that you can select maxes out at 54*. Come on, seriously? This is a stupid oversight, considering that the "standard" lie for all off the shelf drivers out there exceeds 54*. For example, Titleist 910 drivers standard lie is 58.5*, Ping G20 is 58*, and so on and so on. Was this app NOT tested with a Driver? If so, how could this have passed QA? Why not make this a numerical field instead of a field with pre-selected values? Whatever number is specified here is simply plugged into whatever swing data analysis algorithms you have running so i'm puzzled as to why you took this approach.
3) In the same Edit Clubs setup screen, the Flex field only has the "main" flexes, i.e. Regular, Stiff, X-Stiff. This poses a few problems:
a) You need to have in between flexes, i.e. S+ for example. The target market for your Swingbyte device is really for the more "serious" hard-core golfer types and that target market is likely to have shafts that are soft-stepped, hard-stepped, etc. etc. I myself play with C-Taper shafts in S+ flex in my irons. What am I to specify in this field?
b) As you probably know one shaft maker's S is not equal to another shaft maker's S. For example, the C-Tapers are considered "stiffer" than other shafts so the C-Taper S+ for example plays closer to an X than a S as compared to Dynamic Gold shafts for example. But a C-Taper S is definitely stouter than a DG S300. However, I know this, because i'm an equipment junkie, but you should help in taking the guess work out for those who might not.
4) App is buggy..........since logging in this morning, even though I only setup and specified a few clubs, overnight the app seemed to have created several new Driver clubs in my bag, as well as multiple 1 irons all the way down through the bag.
5) Speaking of buggy, app also seemed to have lost my user settings, i.e. date of birth, height, weight, wtf measurements, etc.
6) Allow for portrait mode!!! Right now, app seems forced into Landscape mode.
Please forward the above to the right people and i'm sure i'll find more issues once I receive the unit and begin playing with it.
ER