10 ms·

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 its

by jb1991 2y ago

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 a company that focuses on user interaction, supposedly.

bhauer 2y ago
> prioritizing some pretty little visual animation over actual functionality This describes iOS in a nutshell.
artursapek 2y ago
The lock screen is even worse. I have to slow down to input my passcode or button pushes don’t register.
- afandian 2y ago
  I’m glad someone else noticed this. I never manage to unlock my iPhone first time.
  - artursapek 2y ago
    It’s pretty sad
  - Seb-C 2y ago
    I have a similar problem on my Zenfone, there is a weird delay between key presses, especially when repeating a character twice, so that I often fail my password.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    I always continue to fail several times because after failing once the last press of my last attempt gets registered as the first press of the next attempt so if I’m going fast my next attempt will fail too, until I stop and enter it like my grandmother would.
- jb1991 2y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised it’s using the same UI code as the Calculator app.
- ilammy 2y ago
  I'm sure the horrible lock screen UX is simply a dark pattern to nudge users towards Face ID.
  - herpdyderp 2y ago
    Even if you use Face ID you have to enter the password, instead of your face, regularly
  - mgkimsal 2y ago
    Assuming I get another apple phone, I'm really hoping they still do something with touchid. That was heaven compared to faceid. I don't think I can use apple wallet payments without faceid, otherwise, I'd ditch it.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      I do a lot of stuff with blue/purple gloves, and I can unlock my touchId device wearing those. Doesn't matter why/how. The fact I can shows how it is easy to bypass.
      - ewoodrich 2y ago
        Can someone else wearing the same gloves unlock your device? Otherwise seems more likely the capacitive sensor isn't bothered by a few tenths of a mm of nitrile.
        dylan604 2y ago
        I've assumed it's enough oil/residue left in place that just pressing a clean solid surface to contrast the residue is enough to detect the pattern. Can someone else do it? Quite probably, as I've tried using a different finger from the the registered finger with the glove and it unlocks.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I use a full passphrase with alpha/numeric values instead of a numeric only passcode. I've never seen a sluggish entry on that. Does it behave differently with a numeric only entry? I definitely experience the calculator sluggishness, but never entering my passphrase.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  I have the same problem with the bitwarden macos app. If you start typing directly when it opens it misses keystrokes drives me nuts.
- teekert 2y ago
  Try switching focus mode from the lockscreen (by long pressing somewhere inbetween all notifications, widgets, the clock etc). Always takes me several tries and I end up feeling like something is broken.
  - mason55 2y ago
    This makes me angry literally every morning when I wake up and turn off sleep. And the worst part is that it used to work fine until they changed it to a long press for some reason.
    - JamesonNetworks 2y ago
      I have this same issue, and the same frustration every morning. It’s to the point where I will probably set up a shortcut and train myself not to use it haha. I really miss when it just worked!
- tolmasky 2y ago
  It’s very easy to reproduce this bug, even if you don’t go quickly. Basically, if your tap becomes a “swipe” that leaves the button area, then a previously registered “tap” that’s already shown up in the field will actually “unregister” and disappear from the field. Try it yourself: tap down on a button, watch the dot appear, then without lifting your finger, swipe out of the button, and watch it disappear. This happens a lot when tapping quickly since you are tapping and beginning to move your finger in the direction of the next button. You have to train yourself to make only up and down motions to be able to go quickly. It is indeed very annoying. The way these buttons should work is like telephone buttons (registering on the “mousedown”, not “mouseup”), and not like OK buttons (that register on the “mouseup”), but instead they chose a weird combination of both.
  - moritzwarhier 2y ago
    The "keypress" behavior is not a bug in my opinion, it's a well-established behavior across platforms. You could do the same thing with a button+mouse on a desktop. The dot for the typed character appearing immediately is different from alphanumeric keyboard behavior, because you can't register any key press before releasing the touch (or key) there, due to composition. In my opinion, this is sensible behavior and your vision sounds like it would be a nightmare in reality to me, accidentally pressing neighbouring keys or tapping instead of swiping all the time. Is this any different on Android? I've used Android for most of my smartphone life. And I can't remember how often I was relieved to be able to cancel an accidental tap by swiping away, when I accidentally tapped a link while scrolling for example. This is even the default for mouse buttons, no? It happens, while rarely, still regularly, that I notice I pressed the wrong button just after the mousedown, but before the mouseup. And since I can remember, I was happy that the UI was made so I could then just hold the mouse button and move out of that button to cancel. Just verified your description of the lock screen code buttons. Not a bug, but the behavior you describe would feel buggy to me. There are plenty of UX annoyances on iOS though, that is not what I want to deny. I also prefer GBoard over apples builtin onscreen keyboard.
    - tolmasky 2y ago
      There’s always been two button modes. “mouseup” is indeed the most common. However, “mousedown” is used in certain cases where the feedback is immediate, for example in the phone app where the number shows up as soon as you tap. However, notice that the lock screen uses neither of these, but rather a strange combination of both: it registers on “mousedown”, just like the phone app, showing a new dot in the field, but then will “unregister” if you move away and lift your finger, removing the dot. As far as I can tell, this is the only place buttons work this way.
- deergomoo 2y ago
  The lock screen has been buggy for me for years at this point. At least once a day I'll turn on the screen and for half a second or so the notifications will render with perfectly square edges and then switch to the correct rounded version. Also quite frequently I'll swipe up to view notifications beyond the fold and they'll end up in weird places, like they'll jump further up than they should or jerk around.
- meroes 2y ago
  I swear I’ve put in the wrong passcode before hastily and it unlocks. I wonder if it’s because of this lag the display doesn’t match the input so I really did input it correctly but it just didn’t look like it.
PaulHoule 2y ago
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.
- diggan 2y ago
  > 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 current Motorola Moto G gen4 right?" Well, it is worse. I still have the phone because it still works, but that was my first and last iPhone. Everything is dog slow, not because poor performance but because of slow animations. Same on Android by default, but at least I can speed it up. And the UX makes you jump through hoops, things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube, and the amount of UI bugs seems sky-high for something that sells itself as "Premium". And then CarPlay is just an abomination! Even the most basic things like "I'd like to answer a call while still being able to see the map I use for navigation" seems to be completely ignored and it honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Ugh, I almost look forward to accidentally dropping the phone so I can go back to having a non-distracting experience in the car again. 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?
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube My last Android phone made me watch about a dozen youtube videos to discover how to configure it... It's not an Apple thing anymore.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    CarPlay is a thing because carmakers just can't seem to make a decent "radio" with a touchscreen no matter how they try. It would be nice to see a business school case study that reveals why.
bqmjjx0kac 2y ago
I switched to an iPhone a few years ago and I really miss the Android calculator app. It showed the entire expression typed so far and its current value! In desperation, I have resorted to SSHing to my desktop and using `python` as a calculator.
- jb1991 2y ago
  Well, if you really want that on your phone you can get other calculator apps that are quite advanced. Might be easier than doing what you are doing.
  - lynndotpy 2y ago
    Other calculator apps that might have different privacy policies, and who might call home to Google and Facebook despite reporting "no data collected", and which might disappear from the app store because it costs $100/year to have the privilege of providing a free app (e.g. as happened with OpenCalc. https://github.com/breeko/OpenCalc/issues/3 https://github.com/breeko/OpenCalc/issues/3 )
  - bqmjjx0kac 2y ago
    Believe me, I looked for a while. Nothing quite scratched the itch while also being free, ad-free, and private. I guess I sound quite picky, but SSH + python checks all the boxes.
- oluminate 2y ago
  You can use Siri Search on iOS as a calculator, which works the same way as Finder on a Mac — this keeps track of the entire expression when you’re doing it
  - diggan 2y ago
    > You can use Siri Search on iOS as a calculator With the added benefit of having to press not just one, but two buttons in order to add a "+" sign. First press "123", then press "#+=" and now you can add your complex mathematical characters :)
lynndotpy 2y ago
I'm happy this isn't just me. Apple's calculator app is a showcase for some of their most obtuse UX decisions. IO-blocking animations are everywhere on iOS, and sometimes they result in overlap (e.g. you can activate a widget and open an app if you press an app icon too fast after opening a folder). But having buttons on iOS animate in response to touch but not engage any further is mindblowing and infuriating. It's also filled with obtuse interactions. (Did you know the iPhone's calculator app has extra buttons? You have to use the control center, unlock your screen rotation, and then rotate your phone to access it.) (Did you know you can erase digits by swiping left or right on them? You can't _access_ the hidden digits of precision this way.)
kurthr 2y ago
Maybe it will be fixed in Apple Calculator for iPad (soon to be released 2024) in iOS 18?!?
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  Of course not. Apple would not release a calculator for iPad that doesn't honor the bigger form factor and Apple's uncompromising design and user friendliness, nothing that doesn't make users go "Wow!" in slack-jawed amazement! It needs to work on it for at least five more years, meanwhile you can buy one of the many inferior iPad calculator apps that are not hindered by Apple's vision of greatness.
  - kurthr 2y ago
    This is about the beta iPad calculator in iPadOS 18 from a month ago: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-18-calculator-app/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-18-calculator-app/
rty32 2y ago
Similarly in Google Calendar Android app: https://youtu.be/7z-82Hi5dtc https://youtu.be/7z-82Hi5dtc
gmd63 2y ago
Anyone who has tried to play computer games semi seriously on a Mac has experienced some level of bewilderment due to Apple's decades-long refusal to include an option to disable mouse acceleration in their settings.
- jcotton42 2y ago
  My "favorite" macOS mousing sin is that the reverse scrolling options for touchpads and mice are linked, despite there being two distinct checkboxes. Meaning you cannot have reversed (aka natural) scrolling on a touchpad, and standard scrolling on a mouse at the same time without 3rd-party software.
jagged-chisel 2y ago
It’s not just animation causing the problem. There are so many cases where I touched a button and it’s so slow that I tap again, but when it finally responds, it does the thing twice or changes the UI under me and I tap a different button. Or it changes color/flashes to acknowledge the touch, but does nothing until I’m super patient and try it again and it works. Or it does nothing to acknowledge my touch and doesn’t execute the action, so I question my sanity. The point is that it’s so inconsistent that I don’t have an evidence-based guess at the root cause. My gut says it’s the overuse of dispatch queues.
jader201 2y ago
> and I’m surprised it’s a stock app by the company itself I’m not surprised. Apple’s first party apps have always seemed like afterthoughts that were lower priority than other things. (E.g. relative to what I consider great quality hardware.) Maps was terrible for several years following the release, and is still not great. Screen Time, especially the parental controls side of it, is almost unusable. Find My Friends used to have all sorts of disconnects where it wouldn’t work, though admittedly it seems to have finally gotten better over the past couple years. These are just some examples I can think of. But this bug in the OP doesn’t surprise me.

by jb1991 2y ago

bhauer 2y ago

> prioritizing some pretty little visual animation over actual functionality This describes iOS in a nutshell.

artursapek 2y ago

The lock screen is even worse. I have to slow down to input my passcode or button pushes don’t register.

afandian 2y ago
I’m glad someone else noticed this. I never manage to unlock my iPhone first time.
- artursapek 2y ago
  It’s pretty sad
- Seb-C 2y ago
  I have a similar problem on my Zenfone, there is a weird delay between key presses, especially when repeating a character twice, so that I often fail my password.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  I always continue to fail several times because after failing once the last press of my last attempt gets registered as the first press of the next attempt so if I’m going fast my next attempt will fail too, until I stop and enter it like my grandmother would.
jb1991 2y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised it’s using the same UI code as the Calculator app.
ilammy 2y ago
I'm sure the horrible lock screen UX is simply a dark pattern to nudge users towards Face ID.
- herpdyderp 2y ago
  Even if you use Face ID you have to enter the password, instead of your face, regularly
- mgkimsal 2y ago
  Assuming I get another apple phone, I'm really hoping they still do something with touchid. That was heaven compared to faceid. I don't think I can use apple wallet payments without faceid, otherwise, I'd ditch it.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I do a lot of stuff with blue/purple gloves, and I can unlock my touchId device wearing those. Doesn't matter why/how. The fact I can shows how it is easy to bypass.
    - ewoodrich 2y ago
      Can someone else wearing the same gloves unlock your device? Otherwise seems more likely the capacitive sensor isn't bothered by a few tenths of a mm of nitrile.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        I've assumed it's enough oil/residue left in place that just pressing a clean solid surface to contrast the residue is enough to detect the pattern. Can someone else do it? Quite probably, as I've tried using a different finger from the the registered finger with the glove and it unlocks.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I use a full passphrase with alpha/numeric values instead of a numeric only passcode. I've never seen a sluggish entry on that. Does it behave differently with a numeric only entry? I definitely experience the calculator sluggishness, but never entering my passphrase.
BoredPositron 2y ago
I have the same problem with the bitwarden macos app. If you start typing directly when it opens it misses keystrokes drives me nuts.
teekert 2y ago
Try switching focus mode from the lockscreen (by long pressing somewhere inbetween all notifications, widgets, the clock etc). Always takes me several tries and I end up feeling like something is broken.
- mason55 2y ago
  This makes me angry literally every morning when I wake up and turn off sleep. And the worst part is that it used to work fine until they changed it to a long press for some reason.
  - JamesonNetworks 2y ago
    I have this same issue, and the same frustration every morning. It’s to the point where I will probably set up a shortcut and train myself not to use it haha. I really miss when it just worked!
tolmasky 2y ago
It’s very easy to reproduce this bug, even if you don’t go quickly. Basically, if your tap becomes a “swipe” that leaves the button area, then a previously registered “tap” that’s already shown up in the field will actually “unregister” and disappear from the field. Try it yourself: tap down on a button, watch the dot appear, then without lifting your finger, swipe out of the button, and watch it disappear. This happens a lot when tapping quickly since you are tapping and beginning to move your finger in the direction of the next button. You have to train yourself to make only up and down motions to be able to go quickly. It is indeed very annoying. The way these buttons should work is like telephone buttons (registering on the “mousedown”, not “mouseup”), and not like OK buttons (that register on the “mouseup”), but instead they chose a weird combination of both.
- moritzwarhier 2y ago
  The "keypress" behavior is not a bug in my opinion, it's a well-established behavior across platforms. You could do the same thing with a button+mouse on a desktop. The dot for the typed character appearing immediately is different from alphanumeric keyboard behavior, because you can't register any key press before releasing the touch (or key) there, due to composition. In my opinion, this is sensible behavior and your vision sounds like it would be a nightmare in reality to me, accidentally pressing neighbouring keys or tapping instead of swiping all the time. Is this any different on Android? I've used Android for most of my smartphone life. And I can't remember how often I was relieved to be able to cancel an accidental tap by swiping away, when I accidentally tapped a link while scrolling for example. This is even the default for mouse buttons, no? It happens, while rarely, still regularly, that I notice I pressed the wrong button just after the mousedown, but before the mouseup. And since I can remember, I was happy that the UI was made so I could then just hold the mouse button and move out of that button to cancel. Just verified your description of the lock screen code buttons. Not a bug, but the behavior you describe would feel buggy to me. There are plenty of UX annoyances on iOS though, that is not what I want to deny. I also prefer GBoard over apples builtin onscreen keyboard.
  - tolmasky 2y ago
    There’s always been two button modes. “mouseup” is indeed the most common. However, “mousedown” is used in certain cases where the feedback is immediate, for example in the phone app where the number shows up as soon as you tap. However, notice that the lock screen uses neither of these, but rather a strange combination of both: it registers on “mousedown”, just like the phone app, showing a new dot in the field, but then will “unregister” if you move away and lift your finger, removing the dot. As far as I can tell, this is the only place buttons work this way.
deergomoo 2y ago
The lock screen has been buggy for me for years at this point. At least once a day I'll turn on the screen and for half a second or so the notifications will render with perfectly square edges and then switch to the correct rounded version. Also quite frequently I'll swipe up to view notifications beyond the fold and they'll end up in weird places, like they'll jump further up than they should or jerk around.
meroes 2y ago
I swear I’ve put in the wrong passcode before hastily and it unlocks. I wonder if it’s because of this lag the display doesn’t match the input so I really did input it correctly but it just didn’t look like it.

PaulHoule 2y ago

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.

diggan 2y ago
> 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 current Motorola Moto G gen4 right?" Well, it is worse. I still have the phone because it still works, but that was my first and last iPhone. Everything is dog slow, not because poor performance but because of slow animations. Same on Android by default, but at least I can speed it up. And the UX makes you jump through hoops, things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube, and the amount of UI bugs seems sky-high for something that sells itself as "Premium". And then CarPlay is just an abomination! Even the most basic things like "I'd like to answer a call while still being able to see the map I use for navigation" seems to be completely ignored and it honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Ugh, I almost look forward to accidentally dropping the phone so I can go back to having a non-distracting experience in the car again. 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?
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube My last Android phone made me watch about a dozen youtube videos to discover how to configure it... It's not an Apple thing anymore.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  CarPlay is a thing because carmakers just can't seem to make a decent "radio" with a touchscreen no matter how they try. It would be nice to see a business school case study that reveals why.

bqmjjx0kac 2y ago

I switched to an iPhone a few years ago and I really miss the Android calculator app. It showed the entire expression typed so far and its current value! In desperation, I have resorted to SSHing to my desktop and using `python` as a calculator.

jb1991 2y ago
Well, if you really want that on your phone you can get other calculator apps that are quite advanced. Might be easier than doing what you are doing.
- lynndotpy 2y ago
  Other calculator apps that might have different privacy policies, and who might call home to Google and Facebook despite reporting "no data collected", and which might disappear from the app store because it costs $100/year to have the privilege of providing a free app (e.g. as happened with OpenCalc. https://github.com/breeko/OpenCalc/issues/3 https://github.com/breeko/OpenCalc/issues/3 )
- bqmjjx0kac 2y ago
  Believe me, I looked for a while. Nothing quite scratched the itch while also being free, ad-free, and private. I guess I sound quite picky, but SSH + python checks all the boxes.
oluminate 2y ago
You can use Siri Search on iOS as a calculator, which works the same way as Finder on a Mac — this keeps track of the entire expression when you’re doing it
- diggan 2y ago
  > You can use Siri Search on iOS as a calculator With the added benefit of having to press not just one, but two buttons in order to add a "+" sign. First press "123", then press "#+=" and now you can add your complex mathematical characters :)

lynndotpy 2y ago

I'm happy this isn't just me. Apple's calculator app is a showcase for some of their most obtuse UX decisions. IO-blocking animations are everywhere on iOS, and sometimes they result in overlap (e.g. you can activate a widget and open an app if you press an app icon too fast after opening a folder). But having buttons on iOS animate in response to touch but not engage any further is mindblowing and infuriating. It's also filled with obtuse interactions. (Did you know the iPhone's calculator app has extra buttons? You have to use the control center, unlock your screen rotation, and then rotate your phone to access it.) (Did you know you can erase digits by swiping left or right on them? You can't _access_ the hidden digits of precision this way.)

kurthr 2y ago

Maybe it will be fixed in Apple Calculator for iPad (soon to be released 2024) in iOS 18?!?

ASalazarMX 2y ago
Of course not. Apple would not release a calculator for iPad that doesn't honor the bigger form factor and Apple's uncompromising design and user friendliness, nothing that doesn't make users go "Wow!" in slack-jawed amazement! It needs to work on it for at least five more years, meanwhile you can buy one of the many inferior iPad calculator apps that are not hindered by Apple's vision of greatness.
- kurthr 2y ago
  This is about the beta iPad calculator in iPadOS 18 from a month ago: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-18-calculator-app/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-18-calculator-app/

rty32 2y ago

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

gmd63 2y ago

Anyone who has tried to play computer games semi seriously on a Mac has experienced some level of bewilderment due to Apple's decades-long refusal to include an option to disable mouse acceleration in their settings.

jcotton42 2y ago
My "favorite" macOS mousing sin is that the reverse scrolling options for touchpads and mice are linked, despite there being two distinct checkboxes. Meaning you cannot have reversed (aka natural) scrolling on a touchpad, and standard scrolling on a mouse at the same time without 3rd-party software.

jagged-chisel 2y ago

It’s not just animation causing the problem. There are so many cases where I touched a button and it’s so slow that I tap again, but when it finally responds, it does the thing twice or changes the UI under me and I tap a different button. Or it changes color/flashes to acknowledge the touch, but does nothing until I’m super patient and try it again and it works. Or it does nothing to acknowledge my touch and doesn’t execute the action, so I question my sanity. The point is that it’s so inconsistent that I don’t have an evidence-based guess at the root cause. My gut says it’s the overuse of dispatch queues.

jader201 2y ago

> and I’m surprised it’s a stock app by the company itself I’m not surprised. Apple’s first party apps have always seemed like afterthoughts that were lower priority than other things. (E.g. relative to what I consider great quality hardware.) Maps was terrible for several years following the release, and is still not great. Screen Time, especially the parental controls side of it, is almost unusable. Find My Friends used to have all sorts of disconnects where it wouldn’t work, though admittedly it seems to have finally gotten better over the past couple years. These are just some examples I can think of. But this bug in the OP doesn’t surprise me.