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PCalc for macOS
- radicaldreamer 6y agoPCalc on macOS has been available for years... what's new is that the latest version is a universal app compatible with MacBooks with Apple Silicon ARM processors.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago28 years, specifically. https://www.pcalc.com/mac/twenty.html https://www.pcalc.com/mac/twenty.html
- minimaxir 6y agoPCalc also added a new menu bar widget in Big Sur, which is unexpectedly nifty.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoFun fact, this is the same widget that used to be available on iOS before Apple killed old-style widgets in iOS 14.
- SllX 6y agoWell, deprecated that specific API and hid widgets that use it away in a kind of ghetto at the bottom of the Today view. I still have the PCalc widget on my phone and iPad running 14.2 where it shall remain until James Thomson pulls it or Apple removes its ability to run.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoUse the new widget for non-rpn calc and the full as RPN need to go to setting.
- moralsupply 6y agoAfter all these years I still can't find anything as usable as SpeedCrunch on pretty much any platform
- atdt 6y agoIPython + qtconsole (https://qtconsole.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ https://qtconsole.readthedocs.io/en/stable/), with a config file that autoruns 'from math import *' on init.
- moralsupply 6y agoThat's alright too, but SpeedCrunch is much faster for simpler workflows
- aldanor 6y agoIf only speedcrunch supported currencies :/
- moralsupply 6y agoI generally just write "100 USD in EUR" in google or macos finder...
- spystath 6y agoQalculate (https://qalculate.github.io/ https://qalculate.github.io/) is quite good for linux/bsd
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- poyu 6y agoI always love PCalc on my iPhone, just bought it for the macOS and I was totally blown away by the "About PCalc" "app"....
- sabellito 6y agoI still find it very strange for calculator software to mimic a physical calculator. This[1] is a wonderful calculator for mac if you don't need the scientific bits. I like Numi so much that I made a slightly worse, open source, mutliplatform version of it[2], that I use often. [1] https://numi.app https://numi.app [2] https://github.com/filipesabella/CalcPad https://github.com/filipesabella/CalcPad
- daturkel 6y agoI came to the comments to shill for Numi, which is my favorite app for quick calculations. (I don't personally understand why tiled number buttons would ever be desirable for a non-touchscreen GUI app—I much prefer typing equations in.) And I love Numi's variables which you can update and automatically propagate the changes through downstream calculations.
- seltzered_ 6y agoI came to the comments to shill for http://calca.io http://calca.io . For the most part has just worked and have used it in training videos, client emails, rough math sketches, etc. And the output is just markdown-formatted plaintext so you can still use it for reading purposes without the app.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y agoFrom their website > Functions can also be inverted so that you can solve for their parameters. Note how we were able to use the one equation for Fahrenheit temperatures f to calculate a Celsius temperature c. This looks really cool. Thanks for the recommendation
- npsomaratna 6y agoSame here - my co-founder suggested that I use Numi one day, and I haven't looked back since.
- siraben 6y agoUp to Catalina, macOS used to have the overpowered Emacs calculator[0] preinstalled. Default keybinding to activate it in Emacs is C-x * *. I especially like how it uses RPN but also has an algebraic mode, so one can use whichever is more convenient. There's several other features that I use quite often, such as - symbolic differentiation/integration - conversion between units - solving equations - working with matrices - rewrite systems [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.htm...
- ibiza 6y agoHow well are the keyboard mappings handled? Can I map any key sequence to any command? Can I easily see the current set of mappings? That would make me want to use a GUI calculator as opposed to a command-line one.
- banana_giraffe 6y agoOne of the nice things about having a first-class keyboard with a mouse for the iPad is the more "serious" apps take care to have reasonable keyboard bindings and mouse support. PCalc is in that category. I can't speak for everything, but what I try to do when I use it on my iPad just works, so I've never thought about it. At least on the iPad, the list of keybindings are a tap or two away. I don't see an obvious way to change keys around, though you can move the buttons around. (Don't take this as granted, of course, there are still iPad apps that are actively being updated that ignore the keyboard .. if everything that plays video would treat the spacebar as play/pause, I'd be much happier)
- mshroyer 6y agoPCalc is a work of art. I can't personally speak to the developer's philosophy here, but it feels like they sat down and asked themselves how they could make the best possible app in this very specific domain, then doubled back and added an extra 10x attention to detail on top. A calculator app might seem like a very small thing, but the availability of PCalc is literally one of the handful of items I have in my "pros/cons" list of using iPhone vs. an Android phone.
- Arcsech 6y agoIt is indeed fantastic. I think it's partially an effect of how long the author has been working on it. Per https://www.pcalc.com/mac/twenty.html https://www.pcalc.com/mac/twenty.html, PCalc is 28 years old. That's a lot of time to get feedback, refine your design and add features, and repeat.
- redler 6y agoYou’ve gotta love a calculator app that (at least on iOS) includes a driving game and an AR playground that allows you to festoon your living room with piles of calculators — all of which actually work!
- benhurmarcel 6y agoI was quite satisfied with Realcalc when I used Android. It does RPN and basically all functions I need.
- kergonath 6y agoA great application from a great developer. You’re right, it does not do everything, but does what it’s good it really well. I’ve been using it since the Mac OS 8 days.
- jmnicolas 6y agoMay I ask what's your use case? A basic calculator covers about 95% of my needs especially on a phone.
- mshroyer 6y ago
- gumby 6y agoPCalc has been my go to calculator for years and I didn't mind paying separately for iOS and MacOS. I use it mainly as a programmer calculator. I also use Soulver which has reimagined the calculator interface...you can just use it as a quick calculator, or do more complex calculations when a spreadsheet is too heavyweight, and then go back and edit prior entries. And of course on the Mac you can do calculations right in spotlight (cmd-space 5 + 4) which is pretty low friction.
- codetrotter 6y agoAnyone interested in a good calculator for iOS might also want to check out Tydlig https://apps.apple.com/no/app/tydlig/id721606556 https://apps.apple.com/no/app/tydlig/id721606556 http://tydligapp.com/ http://tydligapp.com/ The coolest thing about Tydlig is that it shows the history and you can reference results from calculations by touch and drag, and then you can change the values used in past calculations and the calculations that depend on the values of those update. Kind of like a spreadsheet but without cells. I use it a lot.
- ysoft 6y agoI've been using Soulver for years, it's really helpful.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI’ve been using PCalc for a couple of decades. I was very happy, when they released an iOS version. There’s also a Watch version (https://www.pcalc.com/ios/ https://www.pcalc.com/ios/), so you can have a wrist calculator, like those old Casio watches.
- DrScientist 6y agoThe author of PCalc ( James Thomson ) also did Dragthing - my favourite app launcher from way back - pre-MacOS X and the dock. https://dragthing.com/ https://dragthing.com/