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I'm not sure how to ask this without it sounding anything other than genuinely curious, but it is: why would you spend money on a calculator app? What does it o

I'm not sure how to ask this without it sounding anything other than genuinely curious, but it is: why would you spend money on a calculator app? What does it offer that other (free) calculator apps don't? Are free apps just so crippled that you need to pay for something full-featured and/or without something like ads? I'm not familiar with the iOS/iPadOS ecosystem.

joemi 7y ago
A paid calculator app might be better designed than a free one. Or it might not have ads, when a free one does. Or it being paid could mean that it'll be better supported with any necessary bugfixes and updates. Or the fact that it's a paid app could imply that it's better designed or better supported (without necessarily being true). Or perhaps you really care about something particular that the paid calculator app does right in your eyes, and the free ones simply don't have. There are lots of reasons one might spend money on a paid calculator app instead of a free one, and I'm sure this list doesn't even cover all the reasons.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  > A paid calculator app might be better designed than a free one. A very bold claim - there are many paid-for calc apps that just use plain floating point math and don't attempt to mimic a proper calculator at all. There are also free calc apps that DO put the work in to be a proper useful calculator.
  - joemi 7y ago
    I don't think it's bold at all to say one _might_ be, as I purposefully did. I'd think that'd be pretty obvious, actually.
    - NikkiA 7y ago
      My point is that 'it costs money' is sadly not a way to gauge good calculators on ios, and a lot of the 'costs money' ones don't even have a free option to test/check-the-precision.
      - joemi 7y ago
        Note that I never said cost was a way to gauge good calculators. I was merely answering the question of why one might pay for a calculator app instead of using one of the many free ones. Again, this is why I very deliberately said "might" in all of my statements. By saying "might", I'm also implying "might not"...
  - criddell 7y ago
    Floating point math is good enough for the vast majority of use cases.
dpcx 7y ago
You could ask a similar question to physical calculators, I think. Why would you pay for an advanced calculator when you can get the cheap-o solar powered calculators for free in many many places? Because you want a quality product with some thought put in to it.
- drusepth 7y ago
  Well, I bought the nice physical calculators because I needed the functionality that they provided over the cheapo calculators. The difference in hardware (processing and screen) between e.g. a solar-polared four-function calculator and a TI-89 are representative of a difference in potential functionality and manifest with a difference in price (driven by real-world production costs). However, one app doesn't have any less resources than another and/or doesn't have any hardware differences that would e.g. add cost if you want to visualize a graph versus compute a number -- outside of the software costs. I guess I just assume all apps are a race to the bottom here, then, because I find it mind-boggling that there aren't free apps with functionality that mimics any and all paid apps (especially in a calculator app specifically, where the dev-work is generally just _making it_ rather than inventing something new). That all is to say: thanks -- I guess it's just a difference in features and quality comparing paid apps to free apps here. I don't really understand how that is the case (why don't people continually make cheaper/free calculators of equal quality?), but at least I understand the how. :)
- NikkiA 7y ago
  Physical calculators have the tactile feedback that allows you to use them at 10x the speed AND without looking at the screen all the time.
criddell 7y ago
It's super configurable and does everything I need, especially when I'm using a keyboard. It's very well documented [1]. It was $10 which feels like a fair and sustainable price for something like this. It's nice to understand the business model. That said, there are lots of free calculators available. [1]: https://s3.amazonaws.com/tlasystems/PCalc-Manual.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/tlasystems/PCalc-Manual.pdf
- macintux 7y ago
  I spent, what, $50 or more on a calculator toolkit for the Mac about 25 years ago, just because it was such cool software. Never got any value out of it, just fun. We are absolutely spoiled by low software prices, and they’re literally spoiling the market.
Grustaf 7y ago
Why would you NOT spend money on a calculator app if it’s better, or you just fancy it? An iPad pro costs 1000 bucks and your time is probably worth around 100 bucks an hour, so if an app is good and costs less than 25 bucks you shouldn’t even stop to think before buying it. A person with a well paid job that thinks twice about paying 5 bucks for anything he could potentially use for work even once is doing it wrong.

joemi 7y ago

A paid calculator app might be better designed than a free one. Or it might not have ads, when a free one does. Or it being paid could mean that it'll be better supported with any necessary bugfixes and updates. Or the fact that it's a paid app could imply that it's better designed or better supported (without necessarily being true). Or perhaps you really care about something particular that the paid calculator app does right in your eyes, and the free ones simply don't have. There are lots of reasons one might spend money on a paid calculator app instead of a free one, and I'm sure this list doesn't even cover all the reasons.

NikkiA 7y ago
> A paid calculator app might be better designed than a free one. A very bold claim - there are many paid-for calc apps that just use plain floating point math and don't attempt to mimic a proper calculator at all. There are also free calc apps that DO put the work in to be a proper useful calculator.
- joemi 7y ago
  I don't think it's bold at all to say one _might_ be, as I purposefully did. I'd think that'd be pretty obvious, actually.
  - NikkiA 7y ago
    My point is that 'it costs money' is sadly not a way to gauge good calculators on ios, and a lot of the 'costs money' ones don't even have a free option to test/check-the-precision.
    - joemi 7y ago
      Note that I never said cost was a way to gauge good calculators. I was merely answering the question of why one might pay for a calculator app instead of using one of the many free ones. Again, this is why I very deliberately said "might" in all of my statements. By saying "might", I'm also implying "might not"...
- criddell 7y ago
  Floating point math is good enough for the vast majority of use cases.

dpcx 7y ago

You could ask a similar question to physical calculators, I think. Why would you pay for an advanced calculator when you can get the cheap-o solar powered calculators for free in many many places? Because you want a quality product with some thought put in to it.

drusepth 7y ago
Well, I bought the nice physical calculators because I needed the functionality that they provided over the cheapo calculators. The difference in hardware (processing and screen) between e.g. a solar-polared four-function calculator and a TI-89 are representative of a difference in potential functionality and manifest with a difference in price (driven by real-world production costs). However, one app doesn't have any less resources than another and/or doesn't have any hardware differences that would e.g. add cost if you want to visualize a graph versus compute a number -- outside of the software costs. I guess I just assume all apps are a race to the bottom here, then, because I find it mind-boggling that there aren't free apps with functionality that mimics any and all paid apps (especially in a calculator app specifically, where the dev-work is generally just _making it_ rather than inventing something new). That all is to say: thanks -- I guess it's just a difference in features and quality comparing paid apps to free apps here. I don't really understand how that is the case (why don't people continually make cheaper/free calculators of equal quality?), but at least I understand the how. :)
NikkiA 7y ago
Physical calculators have the tactile feedback that allows you to use them at 10x the speed AND without looking at the screen all the time.

criddell 7y ago

It's super configurable and does everything I need, especially when I'm using a keyboard. It's very well documented [1]. It was $10 which feels like a fair and sustainable price for something like this. It's nice to understand the business model. That said, there are lots of free calculators available. [1]: https://s3.amazonaws.com/tlasystems/PCalc-Manual.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/tlasystems/PCalc-Manual.pdf

macintux 7y ago
I spent, what, $50 or more on a calculator toolkit for the Mac about 25 years ago, just because it was such cool software. Never got any value out of it, just fun. We are absolutely spoiled by low software prices, and they’re literally spoiling the market.

Grustaf 7y ago

Why would you NOT spend money on a calculator app if it’s better, or you just fancy it? An iPad pro costs 1000 bucks and your time is probably worth around 100 bucks an hour, so if an app is good and costs less than 25 bucks you shouldn’t even stop to think before buying it. A person with a well paid job that thinks twice about paying 5 bucks for anything he could potentially use for work even once is doing it wrong.