15 ms·

Numi – Calculator app for Mac

406 points by caminocorner 6y ago

andy_ppp 6y ago
Wow this is awesome! I kind of want this integrated into Alfred though... Edit: it of course already has it https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Alfred-Integration https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Alfred-Integration
- Exuma 6y ago
  wwoowow excellent find, this is amazing
reid 6y ago
Soulver is a similar app for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with shared documents in iCloud Drive. Check it out if you’re looking for something like this to go!
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  https://soulver.app https://soulver.app
- selykg 6y ago
  Soulver is so good. I use it almost every single day. It's just a great app and isn't that expensive. One of those apps I completely miss when it's not installed on a new device.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- peterloron 6y ago
  AFAIK, Soulver is only for MacOS...
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Nope, I have it on iOS. But they've pulled the old version off the iOS store for the meantime before releasing the new version.
- kstrauser 6y ago
  Soulver is no longer available for iOS and iPadOS. It's been pulled until version 3 comes along: https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375548200833146884 https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375548200833146884
  - reid 6y ago
    Wow, I did not know this! Thanks for sharing. Looks like there is a TestFlight link to get Soulver 2 for iOS and iPadOS if anyone is interested in it: https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375368313774215171 https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375368313774215171 I use Soulver 2 on my iPhone and iPad at least once a week and couldn't imagine going without it.
- cprecioso 6y ago
  And! the parser and calculator engine is free to use for personal projects. It is an extremely pleasant SDK to use, and super powerful. https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    I love this model. Open source the library/SDK, then build your own paid application on top of it.
    - gilgoomesh 6y ago
      Soulver isn't open source. That repo is just a binary.
- monkeydust 6y ago
  Would love to see a web version
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    You want your calculator to be a web page?
    - kebman 6y ago
      Why not. I use Chrome to make quick calculations all the time. Just Ctrl+N and 1+1, and the answer is posted. Then Ctrl+W, and/or Alt+Tab to Sublime or whatever. Then I continue with my life :)
      - Razengan 6y ago
        On macOS, Cmd+Space and just do calculations in the Spotlight search bar.
        argvargc 6y ago
        Just a heads up that everything typed into Spotlight is sent to Apple.
        retromario 6y ago
        Do you have a source for this?
        argvargc 6y ago
        It's in the ToS, and there was a big hoo-haa over it at the time it was introduced. Eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 Aside from that, the most basic understanding of what Spotlight is reveals there is no other way for it to function other than to send the users input off-machine: The user types in a value and results are returned related to that value, some, from online sources.
- sneak 6y ago
  Periodic reminder that iCloud Drive is not end to end encrypted, permitting both Apple and the US federal government to read all of your calculations at any time without a warrant.
- davidgl 6y ago
  Another good one is http://calca.io http://calca.io, very like Soulver but also has simple graphing, runs on mac, iOS and Windows
SkyMarshal 6y ago
This gets posted regularly but not often discussed. Here’s one of the few prior postings with comments, from six years ago, fwiw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802
Exuma 6y ago
How does this compare to Soulver?
- danpalmer 6y ago
  For simple sums, about the same, but 20% cheaper. Soulver is a fair bit more powerful, but I own Soulver (albeit the old v2) and haven't used much from the extended feature set.
neither_color 6y ago
Does it have a widget? The most annoying thing about Big Sur is they removed the widget
- danpalmer 6y ago
  Do you mean dashboard widgets? Dashboard hasn't been actively developed in maybe 10 years now. If you were still using it I'm interested to know why – I stopped because it felt clunky to use and there weren't many widgets. I'm not sure it's much of a criticism of an app if they don't have a Dashboard widget.
  - mikewhy 6y ago
    Widgets in Big Sur are not the same as the old Dashboard: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211789 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211789
    - danpalmer 6y ago
      Yes I'm aware. The comment referred to widget removal in Big Sur though, and the only "widgets" I can think of that were removed were Dashboard widgets. Big Sur/iOS 14 widgets don't support interactivity beyond single clicks, so I don't see any way a Numi widget would be of any benefit.
- growt 6y ago
  It has a status bar mode where it opens in a "pop-up" beneath the status bar icon.
- mromanuk 6y ago
  What do you mean? You can use widgets in Big Sur, WidgetKit it's an unified API across all devices (iOS and MacOS).
  - mikewhy 6y ago
    The calculator widget is no more. IIRC (I haven't looked into how widgets are built) there's no way for a calculator widget to work. They work in a way where the developer just gets to update some data on a schedule.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mromanuk 6y ago
I love the design & minimalism of the website and the App.
erichurkman 6y ago
It's one of the view apps always running on my Mac. I wish it supported multiple windows, though.
sushisource 6y ago
Why is it that OSX gets so many of these nice little apps that seem pretty easy to make multiplatform but they just... aren't?
- finiteseries 6y ago
  The macOS market is generally rich, with a tradition of niche, paid software.
- SllX 6y ago
  Dev preference, time and Cocoa.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Pretty easy as in... the Electron stuff that everyone complains about?
- throwawayfire 6y ago
  One or two developers working and testing on their own machines will have an awful experience trying to make their app work multi-platform. This type of app is going to be valued higher by Mac users.
- argvargc 6y ago
  It's easy to make something multi-platform, but as many lone developers on all OS's have experienced, it quickly becomes a nightmare to maintain more than one platform. Given the ease of macOS GUI development to begin with, there are more small-time, lone developers making full GUI apps there, versus other platforms. Other platforms have a higher barrier of entry in that regard, so the landscape is more conducive to having already started out as a team and so developing a more significant app worthy of that kind of investment.
- behnamoh 6y ago
  To be fair, Windows enjoys many other little/medium/big apps that are not available on macOS.
- Shadonototro 6y ago
BozeWolf 6y ago
What is wrong with “bc” ;-) half joking, anybody else who uses bc? I am by no means an expert, just using the regular add/multiply and sometimes a variable. This looks way better though.
- kevincox 6y ago
  This is what I do. I do it so frequently that I have a small script `b` so that I can `b 'l(156)'` or just type `b` to get a shell with the match library loaded. Seems funny to alias a 2 char command but I often prefer passing the expression on the command line.
  - user3939382 6y ago
    I alias ‘clear’ to ‘c’ because I use it so often and have to immediately set it up on any new machine.
    - thesh4d0w 6y ago
      Try control-l
- erk__ 6y ago
  my favorite calculator app is emacs's calc-mode, it is probably one of the nicest RPN calculators on desktop
- foobarian 6y ago
  It's my go-to calc too but I always start 'bc -l' in case I need decimals.
  - spfzero 6y ago
    I also just type bc -l in one of my iterm windows. Usually that gets me my answer quicker than launching an app or worse, using a browser.
- sgt 6y ago
Abhinav2000 6y ago
My favourite IOS calculator app (for those who are RPN minded). Love this little free gem! https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/rpn-30/id1451413517 https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/rpn-30/id1451413517
- trasz 6y ago
  Also Free42, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629 - free reimplementation of the best RPN calculator ever, and with niceties such as tactile feedback.
evanmoran 6y ago
Does anyone have thoughts on how natural it feels to use ‘:’ instead ‘=‘ for variable creation? From a distance it has a nice elegance, but it is interesting how few programming languages make this choice.
- SamBam 6y ago
  I've always felt similarly. Obviously using "=" comes from math ("let x = 1"), but I've always felt it was such a barrier to a newcomer. Both because of variable creation (it looks more like the answer to a problem, rather than the initial premise) and because then we have to add ungainly new symbols such as "==" and "===" to test for equality.
argvargc 6y ago
What about privacy/tracking? Do queries ever leave the machine, in any form?
- bilalq 6y ago
  It's a good question. The app doesn't look fully open source, but I suspect they'd have to. Currency conversions aren't fixed, after all.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Wouldn't that just require an incoming list of up-to-date currency conversions (fetched on each run, and perhaps cached for an hour or so)? They could do those even without the user asking for any currency calculation -- so in practice no data would ever leave to show anything about actual queries (which would be the case if you e.g. wanted to calculate X euro in yen and they asked for the current euro/yen values only). Plus, you can add it to Little Snitch or some free such, and it wont be able to do any talking anywhere.
    - bilalq 6y ago
      An hourly cache may not be up-to-date enough for many use-cases. But sure, let's say you have some caching on a timed interval and those are all the requests you see. Unless you block all outbound requests from the app, you still can't guarantee it's not reporting on you. Imagine if you saw a header on the request that looked like: ``` Authorization: Bearer A17b2C23kd231h12309 ``` That might look totally safe/normal at a glance. It's just an auth header, right? But who's to say there isn't extra info embedded in there? Maybe "A" means a conversion between USD to Euros and the number after it refers to the number of times such a query was made in the last hour. Maybe the letter after it is a signal for the order of magnitude of the largest unit amount (tens, thousands, millions, etc). I have little hopes for end users (including myself) from ever being able to reliably confirm/disconfirm the privacy impact of closed source apps unless network access is completely cut off. Even if I monitored requests in Little Snitch, who knows what clever encoding schemes can be used to leak out data through requests that appear benign. That's not to say it's not useful to do so (many, if not most malicious apps like that would probably not bother to cover their tracks that well).
orangepanda 6y ago
Hijacking the thread. Does anyone know of a simple paid calculator app for iPad? They all seem to be riddled with ads or obnoxious "cute" features to justify the price
- timo555 6y ago
  I like Tydlig
  - imeron 6y ago
    I love Tydlig
- kstrauser 6y ago
  I love PCalc. It's not "simple" by default, but you can make it into what you want.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I've used PCalc for years (I'm pretty sure that I started using it when MacOS 9 was still the main operating system). It also works for iOS and WatchOS.
- enturn 6y ago
  There's a port of the Windows calculator on the Uno Platform that's ad free, although not paid. https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator
- jameshart 6y ago
  Love Calca on iOS. http://calca.io/ http://calca.io/
  - twarge 6y ago
    Adore Calca on macOS and windows.
- 6y ago
imaginamundo 6y ago
I use a lot and tried to build a simple version for the browser (to use on windows). Not even remotely close to feature set but still works on basic stuffs. https://imaginamundo.github.io/math-notes/ https://imaginamundo.github.io/math-notes/
- erk__ 6y ago
  Another similar web app is CalcuLaTeX https://mkhan45.github.io/CalcuLaTeX-Web/ https://mkhan45.github.io/CalcuLaTeX-Web/
  - fish45 6y ago
    Hey, that's me. I think Numi's more oriented towards a general calculator, whereas CalcuLaTeX is more for longer form problems or documents, although I know that at least a few people use it like a scratchpad. I'll definitely take some inspiration from Numi though. By the way, the new website for CalcuLaTeX is https://calcula.tech https://calcula.tech
peruvian 6y ago
I like numi but I already own Soulver.
lordleft 6y ago
I find that calculators remain weirdly unergonomic on most Operating Systems. There are so many times where I want to do some quick math but feel hobbled by the insistence of calculator software writers to ape physical calculator design -- Numi seems like a cool step in the right direction
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  I didn’t even know there’s a calculator app on macOS. I simply write formulas into Spotlight, and if I need history or variables or anything serious I launch an Octave prompt.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    The built-in macOS calculator also has scientific and progamming modes, and even RPN. There's also Grapher, macOS built-in equation plotter.
    - argvargc 6y ago
      The calculator also has clickable bits in programming mode. Can be handy.
- apazzolini 6y ago
  If you're using OS X, try using Spotlight or Alfred directly (Keypirinha[0] is a reasonable Windows alternative) - just type in `1 + 2` and you get the answer without launching a special app. There are plugins for conversions as well. [0]. https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/
  - leokennis 6y ago
    I love Alfred, also for this reason. These days, DuckDuckGo is my go to calculator. I can type math and conversions and get the answer. And if I don’t, I do the !wa bang and let Wolfram Alpha handle it.
  - ansk 6y ago
sdevonoes 6y ago
Nice app. Based on the source code (https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi) it's not clear to me how the .dmg is built. Is it explained somewhere?
- bilalq 6y ago
  It doesn't look like it's fully open source. I'm just seeing community extensions and the Alfred plugin on the github page.
- dceddia 6y ago
  Not the app author, but I built a Mac app recently and found node-appdmg to be a pretty simple way to create the .dmg: https://github.com/LinusU/node-appdmg https://github.com/LinusU/node-appdmg
bilalq 6y ago
This is really neat. Google does a pretty good job at providing similar answers, but it doesn't support things like summing up past queries and needs copy/pasting for more advanced use-cases. I love the UX here. The simple interface and even the coloring go a long way in making it easy to use.
- mehal 6y ago
  It actually does support summing up. I've discovered - it work in a groups. If you have set of queries divided by space, keyword 'total' or 'sum' would result in a sum of previous group
system2 6y ago
Very great but as I kept watching the demo video on the homepage, I felt like I was watching to learn python. Is there an ubuntu version of this?
ianferrel 6y ago
The final example in their intro video doesn't make sense to me. Can someone explain it? Here's the text: price = $8 times 5 $40 fee = 8% 8 % fee on price in Euro 39.48 EUR What does that mean? "fee on price" should mean "fee times price", right? So 8% of $40. That's nowhere near 39.48 EUR. Could it mean "price after fee is deducted"? But if so, it must have been made during a time when EUR was worth almost 8% less than dollars? Did that ever happen?
- tcskeptic 6y ago
  I suspect it means $40USD in Euro (at about .914 to the dollar) then add 8% to that amount. 5 * 8 = 40 40 * .914 = 36.56 36.56 * 1.08 = 39.48 (ish)
  - ianferrel 6y ago
    Thanks! That is not an obvious conversion from natural language to math to me, but it does seem like the one they must be using.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ksec 6y ago
With Soulver 2 for iOS is not longer available, I wish Numi have a paid version for iOS so it could use iCloud Sync between all devices. Edit: And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion. Some of them has M for million, but most dont.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion Most people aren't Jeff Bezos!
jimvdv 6y ago
Numi looks awesome! My favorite calculator app so far is Tydlig[0], too bad it's has not been updated in a couple years. I remember a really good talk by the creator (Andreas Karlsson), but I can't seem to find it, anyone has any idea what I'm talking about? [0]. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tydlig/id721606556 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tydlig/id721606556
bogeholm 6y ago
My personal favorite calculator app for macOS, for at least the last 6 years: https://julialang.org/downloads/ https://julialang.org/downloads/ ;-)
bbodi 6y ago
Since others already mentioned many fantastic alternatives, let me share mine: https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/ https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/
- elcritch 6y ago
  How difficult would something like this be to port to Visual Studio? P.S. looks like a great app!
  - bbodi 6y ago
    author here: I have zero experience with Visual Studio API, and honestly, looking at what a giant and slow mess VS became, I would not even try it :) But providing a standalone desktop/terminal version is on the list.
    - elcritch 6y ago
      Ah, desktop/terminal would be awesome! It's just too easy to loose track of browser tabs. :-)
- vargasz 6y ago
  What would it take to have this as a desktop app? As I see it it is rust and wasm. It would be nice to have some note about the architecture in the docs, maybe someone would pick it up to make a desktop app from it too.
  - bbodi 6y ago
    Hi, it would not be hard at all, at the moment for me it would be like 1 day of work. Honestly, I just don't see its benefit, you can always open it on a dedicated browser and use it as it would be a desktop app. However, in the next release I might provide a desktop version.
    - vargasz 6y ago
Donmario 6y ago
I use it for many years and I have to say I love it
xixixao 6y ago
I’d so pay for this if it was a plugin for Bear.
- bastardoperator 6y ago
  Does bear do plugins? Genuine ask, I'm not seeing anything on the goog, but would also pay for this in bear too.
  - xixixao 6y ago
    Don’t think so.
Toutouxc 6y ago
Do we have the dev here? I love the idea of a fast and tiny calculator notebook. I was a big Mathematica user (as long as my uni paid for the crazy expensive licence) for even simple calculations, and this would almost scratch my itch. I'm saying almost because it needs a bit more work, at least some more quantities and units, like speed, voltage, power etc. And it all breaks down if you try do a calculation where the quantity/units change, i.e. the units disappear (because the app doesn't understand the formula) and you can't use the conversions anymore. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or that I absolutely need it, but the $24 price is no joke.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
calylex 6y ago
There are at least two super quick ways I always do calculations on a Mac first by pressing CMD+Space for Spotlight search and just typing in the math expression and in Chrome address bar without having to press the enter key.
- notimpotent 6y ago
  This also works in Win10: Windows Key + S, type your query, immediate results in the start menu window. Support fuzzy terms as well. ex. 100ml in cups
dublin 6y ago
This is not all that groundbreaking as a calculator, but would be a cool parsing addition to a Spreadsheet.
nyxtom 6y ago
Definitely has a programming language kind of syntax to it, very nice
holistio 6y ago
So that's $25 for Spotlight, or am I missing something?
- jffry 6y ago
  For how I use it, it lives inbetween Spotlight and Numbers. Here's examples of the types of things I can recall using Numi for in the recent past: https://i.imgur.com/u4EdGbr.png https://i.imgur.com/u4EdGbr.png It's list of features is quite extensive: https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Documentation https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Documentation Plus I don't mind paying for a simple, high-quality tool that I use all the time!
TomJansen 6y ago
Hmm when I need to calculate something I just run python in the terminal, using the underscore to access previous results in the prompt
samirahmed 6y ago
I have used Numi for several years - and versus Alfred/Google variants i have found Numi to be incredibly helpful for most back of the hand calculations. I have yet to find an alternative that is more convenient 1) Configurable keyboard shortcut to bring this up 2) Good units/percentages/bytes support 3) Variable assignments / custom functions 4) Long History
xixixao 6y ago
Took a long time to start, crashed on first save (~losing all my work in that session~ it's back! weird bugs). Some glitches with the parsing. But it is so lovely! We should build an open source version.
jmspring 6y ago
I like spotlight for simple things, my Swissmicro DM42 for more complex things. That said Numi and some of the alternatives do look nice.
brundolf 6y ago
I'm sure this is great for people in certain fields, but personally when I want to do nontrivial calculations (which isn't very often, to be fair) I just open the JS console
gffrd 6y ago
Been using Numi on Mac for quite some time, and I love it for filling the gap between Spotlight and a Spreadsheet for doing off-the-cuff budgeting/analysis. Once I move from one-off calculations to needing to see the moving pieces, I move to Numi—Just works the way my mind does. Things I like: quick/easy variable creation/updating, running sum, easy/flexible commenting/labeling, one-click line result copy
daijiobu 6y ago
Here is a side project of mine, which was inspired by Numi: https://useparsr.com https://useparsr.com
ibraheemdev 6y ago
Any know of something similar in the terminal?
codyogden 6y ago
I like Numi. It’s a handy, unobtrusive math scratch pad. I dislike the two computer license limit that isn’t disclosed prior to purchase, and the need to contact the developer in order to get that license reset if I crash my Mac mini or my MacBook Pro.
neighbour 6y ago
What is it with people calling their applications "beautiful"? What's so beautiful about this?
- dlivingston 6y ago
  Clean and unobtrusive design, with a focus in typography, layout, ample whitespace, and a color palette that provides context and visual information without being gaudy and flashy. With that said, it looks exactly like it could be a random CLI application running in an Oh My Zsh theme. Not much differentiation there. EDIT: I feel like this app could be created in a few hours by wrapping a context-aware unit/currency conversion library with Rich Python [0]. [0]: https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich
toomim 6y ago
I would totally use this if it were an extension to Emacs. I keep lots of calculation results in text files, and edit them in emacs, but I don't want to use a totally separate app whenever I want to enter and calculate some math within a text file.
- joeman1000 6y ago
  Check out calc (M-x calc RET). Full RPN calculator built into emacs, with matrix and symbolic solving capabilities. Best calculator I have ever used.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kleiba 6y ago
  org-mode tables have spreadsheet-like capabilities, i.e., they support formulas.
- unhammer 6y ago
  Try https://blog.sulami.xyz/posts/literate-calc-mode/ https://blog.sulami.xyz/posts/literate-calc-mode/ I use it quite often, very handy
  - toomim 5y ago
    Wow cool! I'm sold! Downloading it now. :)
msravi 6y ago
There's also NaSC on Linux: https://parnold-x.github.io/nasc/ https://parnold-x.github.io/nasc/ And CalcNote on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burton999.notecal&hl=en_IN&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burton999....
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  I installed NaSC on Linux (Pop!_OS) but it was basically unreadable on a dark theme - units were dark grey on black and output was very light grey on white. No preferences button etc to switch styles etc.
eugeniub 6y ago
A lot of people mentioning Soulver as a great alternative. But after running into limitations with Soulver, I eventually discovered Magic Calculator, and I fell in love. It allows for more precise calculations, and it's way cheaper at $4: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-calculator/id421993158?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-calculator/id421993158?m...
perryizgr8 6y ago
It's a very nice app. I have to ask though: why doesn't it quit when I close the window??
- raspasov 6y ago
  That's pretty standard behavior on MacOS for many apps.
scastillo 6y ago
Thanks. This is sooo pleasurable. Now add a wolfram and a GPT-3 plugin
- kleiba 6y ago
  To do what?
villgax 6y ago
What I wanted was the old calculator in the sidebar to be back in Big Sur. It was the one muscle memory that I loved to reach out for something small, no matter how indifferent it makes typing it in spotlight or finely clicking on the dock icon, it will never beat sheer speed/confidence of accessing it in the sidebar
ryanSrich 6y ago
Hm. This looks cool, but doesn't solve my most common use case - percentage increases. Example - https://i.imgur.com/LrnUwnB.png https://i.imgur.com/LrnUwnB.png
- xlii 6y ago
  Few weeks ago on HN there was a post about RPN calculator so I decided to get (both as an apps in form of Free42 and physical device) and learn one (for fun and giggles). It’s one of the best gadget I got in a very long time. I absolutely love it and every single time I see a calculation problem I make a simple program for it. So for your most common use case that would be: 00 { 18-Byte Prgm } 01▸LBL "%INC" 02 X<>Y 03 ÷ 04 1 05 - 06 100 07 × 08 END If you do calculations often (or just are a geek who likes new toys) I thoroughly recommend one.
- WA 6y ago
  Here, I use this for Numi: buy = 20 sell = 219 gain = sell - buy performance = gain / buy * 100 amount = 500 capital_invested = amount * buy capital_returned = amount * sell capital_gain = amount * gain
nomoreusernames 6y ago
eh i use rstudio. overkill? idk but it makes math fun and i like it.
ainiriand 6y ago
Is this part of the next YC batch? Just saying because I find it much better than some of the previous candidates!
tmchow 6y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned https://instacalc.com https://instacalc.com yet. Not a native Mac app but genius. Update: There is a chrome extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instacalc/hfoojdaofolilkhakmhicmonbjmkpoai https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instacalc/hfoojdao...
vzaliva 6y ago
It is nice but it could not beat the power of Wolfram Alpha. The way I use it is from Firefox: 1. Add Search Engine via https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wolfram-alpha-search-engine/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wolfram-alpha... 2. Type = followed by expression in your address bar
- manuelmoreale 6y ago
  I'll add to this—because WA is awesome—that if you're on Mac you can use Alfred (https://www.alfredapp.com https://www.alfredapp.com) and Ask WA directly from your desktop and it will open the result on your default browser.
tunesmith 6y ago
My favorite is still Calca (http://calca.io http://calca.io) - it hasn't been updated for a while, the developer has been working on other things, but it still works for me.
- dshacker 6y ago
  I love calca, it the best for me by a long shot.
cgufus 6y ago
Cool. Has anyone tried to enter 1 barn-megaparsec [1] ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Barn-megaparsec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_meas...
timdaub 6y ago
Oh that's cool. You can change the precision in the setting and when you do currency conversions like 1€ to ETH, it can get to wei-precision (18 decimals). Example: https://imgur.com/a/pdNukwV https://imgur.com/a/pdNukwV
arbirk 6y ago
1500 * 25% = 375 25% * 1500 = 37.500 % 25% * 1500$ = $37.500 ??
KaseKun 6y ago
I just watched the demo on the landing page and am struggling to think of a target audience for this. Most technically oriented Mac users I know use Alfred. A quick CMD+space "4 tea spoons to ml" will open a browser window with your answer from your favourite search engine. For more complex queries, preceded your input with "Wolfram" (tab autocomplete on the "wo") and you have the entire Wolfram engine at your fingertips. The above mechanism is exceptionally flexible to any form of question, conversion, or math,and very low friction. For the tax percentage calculation example (or anything similar), you'll be hard pressed to find someone who has this problem often enough to want to to pay for this, AND doesnt already use anymore comprehensive and familiar spreadsheet tool.
- tzekid 6y ago
  I just started using it a bit and can see myself using it as an alternative for simple stuff I would otherwise do in Excel / Google Sheets.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
Are calculator apps the new To-do list apps for app devs?
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
(2015) Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802

406 points by caminocorner 6y ago

Wow this is awesome! I kind of want this integrated into Alfred though... Edit: it of course already has it https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Alfred-Integration https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Alfred-Integration

Exuma 6y ago
wwoowow excellent find, this is amazing

reid 6y ago

Soulver is a similar app for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with shared documents in iCloud Drive. Check it out if you’re looking for something like this to go!

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
https://soulver.app https://soulver.app
selykg 6y ago
Soulver is so good. I use it almost every single day. It's just a great app and isn't that expensive. One of those apps I completely miss when it's not installed on a new device.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
peterloron 6y ago
AFAIK, Soulver is only for MacOS...
- coldtea 6y ago
  Nope, I have it on iOS. But they've pulled the old version off the iOS store for the meantime before releasing the new version.
kstrauser 6y ago
Soulver is no longer available for iOS and iPadOS. It's been pulled until version 3 comes along: https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375548200833146884 https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375548200833146884
- reid 6y ago
  Wow, I did not know this! Thanks for sharing. Looks like there is a TestFlight link to get Soulver 2 for iOS and iPadOS if anyone is interested in it: https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375368313774215171 https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375368313774215171 I use Soulver 2 on my iPhone and iPad at least once a week and couldn't imagine going without it.
cprecioso 6y ago
And! the parser and calculator engine is free to use for personal projects. It is an extremely pleasant SDK to use, and super powerful. https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore
- nerdponx 6y ago
  I love this model. Open source the library/SDK, then build your own paid application on top of it.
  - gilgoomesh 6y ago
    Soulver isn't open source. That repo is just a binary.
monkeydust 6y ago
Would love to see a web version
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  You want your calculator to be a web page?
  - kebman 6y ago
    Why not. I use Chrome to make quick calculations all the time. Just Ctrl+N and 1+1, and the answer is posted. Then Ctrl+W, and/or Alt+Tab to Sublime or whatever. Then I continue with my life :)
    - Razengan 6y ago
      On macOS, Cmd+Space and just do calculations in the Spotlight search bar.
      - argvargc 6y ago
        Just a heads up that everything typed into Spotlight is sent to Apple.
        retromario 6y ago
        Do you have a source for this?
        argvargc 6y ago
        It's in the ToS, and there was a big hoo-haa over it at the time it was introduced. Eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8473580 Aside from that, the most basic understanding of what Spotlight is reveals there is no other way for it to function other than to send the users input off-machine: The user types in a value and results are returned related to that value, some, from online sources.
sneak 6y ago
Periodic reminder that iCloud Drive is not end to end encrypted, permitting both Apple and the US federal government to read all of your calculations at any time without a warrant.
davidgl 6y ago
Another good one is http://calca.io http://calca.io, very like Soulver but also has simple graphing, runs on mac, iOS and Windows

SkyMarshal 6y ago

This gets posted regularly but not often discussed. Here’s one of the few prior postings with comments, from six years ago, fwiw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802

Exuma 6y ago

How does this compare to Soulver?

danpalmer 6y ago
For simple sums, about the same, but 20% cheaper. Soulver is a fair bit more powerful, but I own Soulver (albeit the old v2) and haven't used much from the extended feature set.

neither_color 6y ago

Does it have a widget? The most annoying thing about Big Sur is they removed the widget

danpalmer 6y ago
Do you mean dashboard widgets? Dashboard hasn't been actively developed in maybe 10 years now. If you were still using it I'm interested to know why – I stopped because it felt clunky to use and there weren't many widgets. I'm not sure it's much of a criticism of an app if they don't have a Dashboard widget.
- mikewhy 6y ago
  Widgets in Big Sur are not the same as the old Dashboard: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211789 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211789
  - danpalmer 6y ago
    Yes I'm aware. The comment referred to widget removal in Big Sur though, and the only "widgets" I can think of that were removed were Dashboard widgets. Big Sur/iOS 14 widgets don't support interactivity beyond single clicks, so I don't see any way a Numi widget would be of any benefit.
growt 6y ago
It has a status bar mode where it opens in a "pop-up" beneath the status bar icon.
mromanuk 6y ago
What do you mean? You can use widgets in Big Sur, WidgetKit it's an unified API across all devices (iOS and MacOS).
- mikewhy 6y ago
  The calculator widget is no more. IIRC (I haven't looked into how widgets are built) there's no way for a calculator widget to work. They work in a way where the developer just gets to update some data on a schedule.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mromanuk 6y ago

I love the design & minimalism of the website and the App.

erichurkman 6y ago

It's one of the view apps always running on my Mac. I wish it supported multiple windows, though.

sushisource 6y ago

Why is it that OSX gets so many of these nice little apps that seem pretty easy to make multiplatform but they just... aren't?

finiteseries 6y ago
The macOS market is generally rich, with a tradition of niche, paid software.
SllX 6y ago
Dev preference, time and Cocoa.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Pretty easy as in... the Electron stuff that everyone complains about?
throwawayfire 6y ago
One or two developers working and testing on their own machines will have an awful experience trying to make their app work multi-platform. This type of app is going to be valued higher by Mac users.
argvargc 6y ago
It's easy to make something multi-platform, but as many lone developers on all OS's have experienced, it quickly becomes a nightmare to maintain more than one platform. Given the ease of macOS GUI development to begin with, there are more small-time, lone developers making full GUI apps there, versus other platforms. Other platforms have a higher barrier of entry in that regard, so the landscape is more conducive to having already started out as a team and so developing a more significant app worthy of that kind of investment.
behnamoh 6y ago
To be fair, Windows enjoys many other little/medium/big apps that are not available on macOS.
Shadonototro 6y ago

BozeWolf 6y ago

What is wrong with “bc” ;-) half joking, anybody else who uses bc? I am by no means an expert, just using the regular add/multiply and sometimes a variable. This looks way better though.

kevincox 6y ago
This is what I do. I do it so frequently that I have a small script `b` so that I can `b 'l(156)'` or just type `b` to get a shell with the match library loaded. Seems funny to alias a 2 char command but I often prefer passing the expression on the command line.
- user3939382 6y ago
  I alias ‘clear’ to ‘c’ because I use it so often and have to immediately set it up on any new machine.
  - thesh4d0w 6y ago
    Try control-l
erk__ 6y ago
my favorite calculator app is emacs's calc-mode, it is probably one of the nicest RPN calculators on desktop
foobarian 6y ago
It's my go-to calc too but I always start 'bc -l' in case I need decimals.
- spfzero 6y ago
  I also just type bc -l in one of my iterm windows. Usually that gets me my answer quicker than launching an app or worse, using a browser.
sgt 6y ago

Abhinav2000 6y ago

My favourite IOS calculator app (for those who are RPN minded). Love this little free gem! https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/rpn-30/id1451413517 https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/rpn-30/id1451413517

trasz 6y ago
Also Free42, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629 - free reimplementation of the best RPN calculator ever, and with niceties such as tactile feedback.

evanmoran 6y ago

Does anyone have thoughts on how natural it feels to use ‘:’ instead ‘=‘ for variable creation? From a distance it has a nice elegance, but it is interesting how few programming languages make this choice.

SamBam 6y ago
I've always felt similarly. Obviously using "=" comes from math ("let x = 1"), but I've always felt it was such a barrier to a newcomer. Both because of variable creation (it looks more like the answer to a problem, rather than the initial premise) and because then we have to add ungainly new symbols such as "==" and "===" to test for equality.

argvargc 6y ago

What about privacy/tracking? Do queries ever leave the machine, in any form?

bilalq 6y ago
It's a good question. The app doesn't look fully open source, but I suspect they'd have to. Currency conversions aren't fixed, after all.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Wouldn't that just require an incoming list of up-to-date currency conversions (fetched on each run, and perhaps cached for an hour or so)? They could do those even without the user asking for any currency calculation -- so in practice no data would ever leave to show anything about actual queries (which would be the case if you e.g. wanted to calculate X euro in yen and they asked for the current euro/yen values only). Plus, you can add it to Little Snitch or some free such, and it wont be able to do any talking anywhere.
  - bilalq 6y ago
    An hourly cache may not be up-to-date enough for many use-cases. But sure, let's say you have some caching on a timed interval and those are all the requests you see. Unless you block all outbound requests from the app, you still can't guarantee it's not reporting on you. Imagine if you saw a header on the request that looked like: ``` Authorization: Bearer A17b2C23kd231h12309 ``` That might look totally safe/normal at a glance. It's just an auth header, right? But who's to say there isn't extra info embedded in there? Maybe "A" means a conversion between USD to Euros and the number after it refers to the number of times such a query was made in the last hour. Maybe the letter after it is a signal for the order of magnitude of the largest unit amount (tens, thousands, millions, etc). I have little hopes for end users (including myself) from ever being able to reliably confirm/disconfirm the privacy impact of closed source apps unless network access is completely cut off. Even if I monitored requests in Little Snitch, who knows what clever encoding schemes can be used to leak out data through requests that appear benign. That's not to say it's not useful to do so (many, if not most malicious apps like that would probably not bother to cover their tracks that well).

orangepanda 6y ago

Hijacking the thread. Does anyone know of a simple paid calculator app for iPad? They all seem to be riddled with ads or obnoxious "cute" features to justify the price

timo555 6y ago
I like Tydlig
- imeron 6y ago
  I love Tydlig
kstrauser 6y ago
I love PCalc. It's not "simple" by default, but you can make it into what you want.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I've used PCalc for years (I'm pretty sure that I started using it when MacOS 9 was still the main operating system). It also works for iOS and WatchOS.
enturn 6y ago
There's a port of the Windows calculator on the Uno Platform that's ad free, although not paid. https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator
jameshart 6y ago
Love Calca on iOS. http://calca.io/ http://calca.io/
- twarge 6y ago
  Adore Calca on macOS and windows.
6y ago

imaginamundo 6y ago

I use a lot and tried to build a simple version for the browser (to use on windows). Not even remotely close to feature set but still works on basic stuffs. https://imaginamundo.github.io/math-notes/ https://imaginamundo.github.io/math-notes/

erk__ 6y ago
Another similar web app is CalcuLaTeX https://mkhan45.github.io/CalcuLaTeX-Web/ https://mkhan45.github.io/CalcuLaTeX-Web/
- fish45 6y ago
  Hey, that's me. I think Numi's more oriented towards a general calculator, whereas CalcuLaTeX is more for longer form problems or documents, although I know that at least a few people use it like a scratchpad. I'll definitely take some inspiration from Numi though. By the way, the new website for CalcuLaTeX is https://calcula.tech https://calcula.tech

peruvian 6y ago

I like numi but I already own Soulver.

lordleft 6y ago

I find that calculators remain weirdly unergonomic on most Operating Systems. There are so many times where I want to do some quick math but feel hobbled by the insistence of calculator software writers to ape physical calculator design -- Numi seems like a cool step in the right direction

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
I didn’t even know there’s a calculator app on macOS. I simply write formulas into Spotlight, and if I need history or variables or anything serious I launch an Octave prompt.
- coldtea 6y ago
  The built-in macOS calculator also has scientific and progamming modes, and even RPN. There's also Grapher, macOS built-in equation plotter.
  - argvargc 6y ago
    The calculator also has clickable bits in programming mode. Can be handy.
apazzolini 6y ago
If you're using OS X, try using Spotlight or Alfred directly (Keypirinha[0] is a reasonable Windows alternative) - just type in `1 + 2` and you get the answer without launching a special app. There are plugins for conversions as well. [0]. https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/
- leokennis 6y ago
  I love Alfred, also for this reason. These days, DuckDuckGo is my go to calculator. I can type math and conversions and get the answer. And if I don’t, I do the !wa bang and let Wolfram Alpha handle it.
- ansk 6y ago

sdevonoes 6y ago

Nice app. Based on the source code (https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi) it's not clear to me how the .dmg is built. Is it explained somewhere?

bilalq 6y ago
It doesn't look like it's fully open source. I'm just seeing community extensions and the Alfred plugin on the github page.
dceddia 6y ago
Not the app author, but I built a Mac app recently and found node-appdmg to be a pretty simple way to create the .dmg: https://github.com/LinusU/node-appdmg https://github.com/LinusU/node-appdmg

bilalq 6y ago

This is really neat. Google does a pretty good job at providing similar answers, but it doesn't support things like summing up past queries and needs copy/pasting for more advanced use-cases. I love the UX here. The simple interface and even the coloring go a long way in making it easy to use.

mehal 6y ago
It actually does support summing up. I've discovered - it work in a groups. If you have set of queries divided by space, keyword 'total' or 'sum' would result in a sum of previous group

system2 6y ago

Very great but as I kept watching the demo video on the homepage, I felt like I was watching to learn python. Is there an ubuntu version of this?

ianferrel 6y ago

The final example in their intro video doesn't make sense to me. Can someone explain it? Here's the text: price = $8 times 5 $40 fee = 8% 8 % fee on price in Euro 39.48 EUR What does that mean? "fee on price" should mean "fee times price", right? So 8% of $40. That's nowhere near 39.48 EUR. Could it mean "price after fee is deducted"? But if so, it must have been made during a time when EUR was worth almost 8% less than dollars? Did that ever happen?

tcskeptic 6y ago
I suspect it means $40USD in Euro (at about .914 to the dollar) then add 8% to that amount. 5 * 8 = 40 40 * .914 = 36.56 36.56 * 1.08 = 39.48 (ish)
- ianferrel 6y ago
  Thanks! That is not an obvious conversion from natural language to math to me, but it does seem like the one they must be using.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ksec 6y ago

With Soulver 2 for iOS is not longer available, I wish Numi have a paid version for iOS so it could use iCloud Sync between all devices. Edit: And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion. Some of them has M for million, but most dont.

coldtea 6y ago
>And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion Most people aren't Jeff Bezos!

jimvdv 6y ago

Numi looks awesome! My favorite calculator app so far is Tydlig[0], too bad it's has not been updated in a couple years. I remember a really good talk by the creator (Andreas Karlsson), but I can't seem to find it, anyone has any idea what I'm talking about? [0]. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tydlig/id721606556 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tydlig/id721606556

bogeholm 6y ago

My personal favorite calculator app for macOS, for at least the last 6 years: https://julialang.org/downloads/ https://julialang.org/downloads/ ;-)

bbodi 6y ago

Since others already mentioned many fantastic alternatives, let me share mine: https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/ https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/

elcritch 6y ago
How difficult would something like this be to port to Visual Studio? P.S. looks like a great app!
- bbodi 6y ago
  author here: I have zero experience with Visual Studio API, and honestly, looking at what a giant and slow mess VS became, I would not even try it :) But providing a standalone desktop/terminal version is on the list.
  - elcritch 6y ago
    Ah, desktop/terminal would be awesome! It's just too easy to loose track of browser tabs. :-)
vargasz 6y ago
What would it take to have this as a desktop app? As I see it it is rust and wasm. It would be nice to have some note about the architecture in the docs, maybe someone would pick it up to make a desktop app from it too.
- bbodi 6y ago
  Hi, it would not be hard at all, at the moment for me it would be like 1 day of work. Honestly, I just don't see its benefit, you can always open it on a dedicated browser and use it as it would be a desktop app. However, in the next release I might provide a desktop version.
  - vargasz 6y ago

Donmario 6y ago

I use it for many years and I have to say I love it

xixixao 6y ago

I’d so pay for this if it was a plugin for Bear.

bastardoperator 6y ago
Does bear do plugins? Genuine ask, I'm not seeing anything on the goog, but would also pay for this in bear too.
- xixixao 6y ago
  Don’t think so.

Toutouxc 6y ago

Do we have the dev here? I love the idea of a fast and tiny calculator notebook. I was a big Mathematica user (as long as my uni paid for the crazy expensive licence) for even simple calculations, and this would almost scratch my itch. I'm saying almost because it needs a bit more work, at least some more quantities and units, like speed, voltage, power etc. And it all breaks down if you try do a calculation where the quantity/units change, i.e. the units disappear (because the app doesn't understand the formula) and you can't use the conversions anymore. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or that I absolutely need it, but the $24 price is no joke.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

calylex 6y ago

There are at least two super quick ways I always do calculations on a Mac first by pressing CMD+Space for Spotlight search and just typing in the math expression and in Chrome address bar without having to press the enter key.

notimpotent 6y ago
This also works in Win10: Windows Key + S, type your query, immediate results in the start menu window. Support fuzzy terms as well. ex. 100ml in cups

dublin 6y ago

This is not all that groundbreaking as a calculator, but would be a cool parsing addition to a Spreadsheet.

nyxtom 6y ago

Definitely has a programming language kind of syntax to it, very nice

holistio 6y ago

So that's $25 for Spotlight, or am I missing something?

jffry 6y ago
For how I use it, it lives inbetween Spotlight and Numbers. Here's examples of the types of things I can recall using Numi for in the recent past: https://i.imgur.com/u4EdGbr.png https://i.imgur.com/u4EdGbr.png It's list of features is quite extensive: https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Documentation https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Documentation Plus I don't mind paying for a simple, high-quality tool that I use all the time!

TomJansen 6y ago

Hmm when I need to calculate something I just run python in the terminal, using the underscore to access previous results in the prompt

samirahmed 6y ago

I have used Numi for several years - and versus Alfred/Google variants i have found Numi to be incredibly helpful for most back of the hand calculations. I have yet to find an alternative that is more convenient 1) Configurable keyboard shortcut to bring this up 2) Good units/percentages/bytes support 3) Variable assignments / custom functions 4) Long History

xixixao 6y ago

Took a long time to start, crashed on first save (~losing all my work in that session~ it's back! weird bugs). Some glitches with the parsing. But it is so lovely! We should build an open source version.

jmspring 6y ago

I like spotlight for simple things, my Swissmicro DM42 for more complex things. That said Numi and some of the alternatives do look nice.

brundolf 6y ago

I'm sure this is great for people in certain fields, but personally when I want to do nontrivial calculations (which isn't very often, to be fair) I just open the JS console

gffrd 6y ago

Been using Numi on Mac for quite some time, and I love it for filling the gap between Spotlight and a Spreadsheet for doing off-the-cuff budgeting/analysis. Once I move from one-off calculations to needing to see the moving pieces, I move to Numi—Just works the way my mind does. Things I like: quick/easy variable creation/updating, running sum, easy/flexible commenting/labeling, one-click line result copy

daijiobu 6y ago

Here is a side project of mine, which was inspired by Numi: https://useparsr.com https://useparsr.com

ibraheemdev 6y ago

Any know of something similar in the terminal?

codyogden 6y ago

I like Numi. It’s a handy, unobtrusive math scratch pad. I dislike the two computer license limit that isn’t disclosed prior to purchase, and the need to contact the developer in order to get that license reset if I crash my Mac mini or my MacBook Pro.

neighbour 6y ago

What is it with people calling their applications "beautiful"? What's so beautiful about this?

dlivingston 6y ago
Clean and unobtrusive design, with a focus in typography, layout, ample whitespace, and a color palette that provides context and visual information without being gaudy and flashy. With that said, it looks exactly like it could be a random CLI application running in an Oh My Zsh theme. Not much differentiation there. EDIT: I feel like this app could be created in a few hours by wrapping a context-aware unit/currency conversion library with Rich Python [0]. [0]: https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich

toomim 6y ago

I would totally use this if it were an extension to Emacs. I keep lots of calculation results in text files, and edit them in emacs, but I don't want to use a totally separate app whenever I want to enter and calculate some math within a text file.

joeman1000 6y ago
Check out calc (M-x calc RET). Full RPN calculator built into emacs, with matrix and symbolic solving capabilities. Best calculator I have ever used.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kleiba 6y ago
org-mode tables have spreadsheet-like capabilities, i.e., they support formulas.
unhammer 6y ago
Try https://blog.sulami.xyz/posts/literate-calc-mode/ https://blog.sulami.xyz/posts/literate-calc-mode/ I use it quite often, very handy
- toomim 5y ago
  Wow cool! I'm sold! Downloading it now. :)

msravi 6y ago

There's also NaSC on Linux: https://parnold-x.github.io/nasc/ https://parnold-x.github.io/nasc/ And CalcNote on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burton999.notecal&hl=en_IN&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burton999....

noisy_boy 6y ago
I installed NaSC on Linux (Pop!_OS) but it was basically unreadable on a dark theme - units were dark grey on black and output was very light grey on white. No preferences button etc to switch styles etc.

eugeniub 6y ago

A lot of people mentioning Soulver as a great alternative. But after running into limitations with Soulver, I eventually discovered Magic Calculator, and I fell in love. It allows for more precise calculations, and it's way cheaper at $4: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-calculator/id421993158?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-calculator/id421993158?m...

perryizgr8 6y ago

It's a very nice app. I have to ask though: why doesn't it quit when I close the window??

raspasov 6y ago
That's pretty standard behavior on MacOS for many apps.

scastillo 6y ago

Thanks. This is sooo pleasurable. Now add a wolfram and a GPT-3 plugin

kleiba 6y ago
To do what?

villgax 6y ago

What I wanted was the old calculator in the sidebar to be back in Big Sur. It was the one muscle memory that I loved to reach out for something small, no matter how indifferent it makes typing it in spotlight or finely clicking on the dock icon, it will never beat sheer speed/confidence of accessing it in the sidebar

ryanSrich 6y ago

Hm. This looks cool, but doesn't solve my most common use case - percentage increases. Example - https://i.imgur.com/LrnUwnB.png https://i.imgur.com/LrnUwnB.png

xlii 6y ago
Few weeks ago on HN there was a post about RPN calculator so I decided to get (both as an apps in form of Free42 and physical device) and learn one (for fun and giggles). It’s one of the best gadget I got in a very long time. I absolutely love it and every single time I see a calculation problem I make a simple program for it. So for your most common use case that would be: 00 { 18-Byte Prgm } 01▸LBL "%INC" 02 X<>Y 03 ÷ 04 1 05 - 06 100 07 × 08 END If you do calculations often (or just are a geek who likes new toys) I thoroughly recommend one.
WA 6y ago
Here, I use this for Numi: buy = 20 sell = 219 gain = sell - buy performance = gain / buy * 100 amount = 500 capital_invested = amount * buy capital_returned = amount * sell capital_gain = amount * gain

nomoreusernames 6y ago

eh i use rstudio. overkill? idk but it makes math fun and i like it.

ainiriand 6y ago

Is this part of the next YC batch? Just saying because I find it much better than some of the previous candidates!

tmchow 6y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned https://instacalc.com https://instacalc.com yet. Not a native Mac app but genius. Update: There is a chrome extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instacalc/hfoojdaofolilkhakmhicmonbjmkpoai https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instacalc/hfoojdao...

vzaliva 6y ago

It is nice but it could not beat the power of Wolfram Alpha. The way I use it is from Firefox: 1. Add Search Engine via https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wolfram-alpha-search-engine/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wolfram-alpha... 2. Type = followed by expression in your address bar

manuelmoreale 6y ago
I'll add to this—because WA is awesome—that if you're on Mac you can use Alfred (https://www.alfredapp.com https://www.alfredapp.com) and Ask WA directly from your desktop and it will open the result on your default browser.

tunesmith 6y ago

My favorite is still Calca (http://calca.io http://calca.io) - it hasn't been updated for a while, the developer has been working on other things, but it still works for me.

dshacker 6y ago
I love calca, it the best for me by a long shot.

cgufus 6y ago

Cool. Has anyone tried to enter 1 barn-megaparsec [1] ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Barn-megaparsec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_meas...

timdaub 6y ago

Oh that's cool. You can change the precision in the setting and when you do currency conversions like 1€ to ETH, it can get to wei-precision (18 decimals). Example: https://imgur.com/a/pdNukwV https://imgur.com/a/pdNukwV

arbirk 6y ago

1500 * 25% = 375 25% * 1500 = 37.500 % 25% * 1500$ = $37.500 ??

KaseKun 6y ago

I just watched the demo on the landing page and am struggling to think of a target audience for this. Most technically oriented Mac users I know use Alfred. A quick CMD+space "4 tea spoons to ml" will open a browser window with your answer from your favourite search engine. For more complex queries, preceded your input with "Wolfram" (tab autocomplete on the "wo") and you have the entire Wolfram engine at your fingertips. The above mechanism is exceptionally flexible to any form of question, conversion, or math,and very low friction. For the tax percentage calculation example (or anything similar), you'll be hard pressed to find someone who has this problem often enough to want to to pay for this, AND doesnt already use anymore comprehensive and familiar spreadsheet tool.

tzekid 6y ago
I just started using it a bit and can see myself using it as an alternative for simple stuff I would otherwise do in Excel / Google Sheets.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

Are calculator apps the new To-do list apps for app devs?

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

(2015) Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802