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Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

martin.wojtczyk.de

311–320 of 408 posts

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#311
post #96

On mobile devices, Apple’s Calculator app has always been one of the most frustrating apps I’ve ever used, and I’m surprised it’s a stock app by the company itself. If you press buttons quickly, like you would a normal calculator, many of the key presses simply don’t register at all. I’m not sure if they’re prioritizing some pretty little visual animation over actual functionality, but it’s incredibly surprising from…

Similarly in Google Calendar Android app: https://youtu.be/7z-82Hi5dtc

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#312

A friend doing homework for a university assignment, circa Leopard or Snow Leopard, noticed that Calculator produced negative values when raising a negative number to an even power. The bug turned out to be in CFNumber, in Core Foundation. CFNumber does a lot of fiddly stuff at the bit level for performance, and one of their optimizations for exponentiation was incorrect. Somehow it was never found by tests or due to…

The Windows 3.1 calculator has a fun bug where 2.01 - 2.00 returns the result of 0.00, not 0.01.

That always amused me.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#313

A friend doing homework for a university assignment, circa Leopard or Snow Leopard, noticed that Calculator produced negative values when raising a negative number to an even power. The bug turned out to be in CFNumber, in Core Foundation. CFNumber does a lot of fiddly stuff at the bit level for performance, and one of their optimizations for exponentiation was incorrect. Somehow it was never found by tests or due to…

Maybe they never had proper tests. Something as simple as exponentiating,which is a basic functionality of any modern calculator, not working for 50% of all integers? That looks to me like no one ever really tested that stuff.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#314

> I would contact Apple, if there was a feedback option, but there isn’t There is: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/ That said, it isn’t very user-friendly, and I find that they don’t seem to pay much attention to it. When they do respond, it tends to be some form of “#wontfix. Please close this.” That looks like a fairly ugly little bug. I suspect they know about it now, thanks to the HN Bug Reporter. It tends to…

I got surprisingly helpful technical support through Feedback Assistant for a problem I reported having with a >10 year old Thunderbolt display. I always thought these "send feedback" forms at big companies always just went to /dev/null, but after sending three bug reports with logs (and after six months) I got a fairly technical response which was obviously written by an engineer, including a root cause diagnosis and a workaround that actually worked. Have to say I was very impressed.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#316
post #96

On mobile devices, Apple’s Calculator app has always been one of the most frustrating apps I’ve ever used, and I’m surprised it’s a stock app by the company itself. If you press buttons quickly, like you would a normal calculator, many of the key presses simply don’t register at all. I’m not sure if they’re prioritizing some pretty little visual animation over actual functionality, but it’s incredibly surprising from…

> prioritizing some pretty little visual animation over actual functionality

This describes iOS in a nutshell.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#317
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: I just remembered the most egregious issue: How can I see the current year without having to open up a separate calendar application/put a huge widget on my home screen? I'm not a fan of Apple for many reasons and I agree with your overall sentiment (though not with the same voracity), but I'm really curious how _this_ is the most egregious issue for you. The calendar year changes so infrequently, why would y…

> but I'm really curious how _this_ is the most egregious issue for you. Because it's so basic. Add a switch that lets me decide how I want the date to be displayed on the lockscreen/notifications centre. > why would you need it featured so prominently? It doesn't need to be more prominently than where the date is right now, I just want the current year next to it as well.

>Because it's so basic

Exactly, it's such basic knowledge to know - it'd be a waste of space to show it ... What UI even gives you the option to have year next to date/day and time?

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#318
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have been true once, but I don't think that's really true any more. Most users are not awed by their iPhone experience as they were ten years ago. Everyone realizes that iOS and Android are essentially identical for most practical purposes and usability, and most are not choosing the platform for that reason any more. I also think plenty of people in-house at Apple are well-aware of these issues. Today, it…

It’s really the cross-device stuff that keeps me in Apple’s ecosystem. Taking phone calls on my mac, having recent browser tabs from all devices on every device, etc. of course each individual thing can be done on windows / android / linux, but the out-of-the-box, no-config-required experience is really very good. Even if it is frequently and frustratingly not perfect.

Calls on computer? Like Signal allows? Tabs from other device? Like Firefox offers?

The thing is, it is very easy in comparison to offer this cross device functionality, if you lock in your users and can simply make lots of assumptions about what software the user will be using. How much of that cross platform stuff works for non-standard browser or non-standard messenger?

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#319
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's greatest weakness is that many of it's fans and I'd assume people in house assume they are the epitome of UI design when actually it's not. The thoughtlessness/pixel ratio might be worse than Microsoft in some cases, which can be hard to believe.

> Apple's greatest weakness is that many of it's fans and I'd assume people in house assume they are the epitome of UI design when actually it's not. Which led to people like me making a fool out of themselves. Always been using Android, and listened to iPhone users singing the praise of the amazing UI and UX of iOS. Well, eventually iPhone 12 Mini released so I figured, "why not give it a try, can't be worse than my…

To be fair: I also can't find the current year on my Pixel 4 (Android 13) in the clock app or the settings. I have to open Google Calendar.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#320

> I would contact Apple, if there was a feedback option, but there isn’t There is: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/ That said, it isn’t very user-friendly, and I find that they don’t seem to pay much attention to it. When they do respond, it tends to be some form of “#wontfix. Please close this.” That looks like a fairly ugly little bug. I suspect they know about it now, thanks to the HN Bug Reporter. It tends to…

It appears to be fixed already in Sequoia.

https://imgur.com/a/5klvt24

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