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Comment by Buttons840

21 days ago

I clicked hoping this would be about how old graphing calculators are generally better math companions than a phone.

The best way to do math on my phone I know of is the HP Prime emulator.

19 comments

Buttons840

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watersb  21 days ago

PCalc -- because it runs on every Apple platform since the Mac Classic:

https://pcalc.com/mac/thirty.html

My other favorite calculator is free42, or its larger display version plus42

https://thomasokken.com/plus42/

For a CAS tool on a pocket mobile device, I haven't found anything better than MathStudio (formerly SpaceTime):

https://mathstud.io

You can run that in your web browser, but they maintain a mobile app version. It's like a self-hosted Wolfram Alpha.

  • Melatonic  21 days ago

    The last one was interesting but both apps haven't been updated in 4 years. Hard to pay for something like that.

    They do have some new AI math app that's regularly updated

xoa  21 days ago

My personal favorite is iHP48 (previously I used m48+ before it died) running an HP 48GX with metakernal installed as I used through college. Still just so intuitive and fast to me.

xp84  21 days ago

I was pretty delighted to realize I could now delete the lame Calculator.app from my iPhone and replace it with something of my choice. For now I've settled on NumWorks, which is apparently an emulator of a modern upstart physical graphing calc that has made some inroads into schools. And of course, you can make a Control Center button to launch an app, so that's what I did.

Honestly, the main beef I have with Calculator.app is that on a screen this big, I ought to be able to see several previous calculations and scroll up if needed. I don't want an exact replica of a 1990s 4-function calculator like the default is (ok, it has more digits and the ability to paste, but besides that, adds almost nothing).

  • vscode-rest  20 days ago

    Calculator.app does have history now FWIW, it goes back to 2025 on my device. And you can make the default vertical be a scientific calculator now too.

    Also it does some level of symbolic evaluation: sin^-1(cos^-1(tan^-1(tan(cos(sin(9))))))== 9, which is a better result than many standalone calculators.

    Also it has a library of built in unit conversations, including live updating currency conversions. You won’t see that on a TI-89!

    And I just discovered it actually has a built in 2D/3D graphing ability. Now the question is it allows parametric graphing like the MacOS one…

    All that said, obviously the TI-8X family hold a special place in my heart as TI-BASIC was my first language. I just don’t see a reason to use one any more day to day.

    • xp84  17 days ago

      I haven't reinstalled it to check how it's implemented, but I want that history visible on the screen. So that I can do 3 calculations, then look up and see the calculations and results, for instance, to copy them down somewhere.

      I'd like multitasking too with multiple apps visible at once so I could copy figures easily from one app to another, like the Android I tried in 2020, but obviously that's asking too much of Apple.

  • Buttons840  21 days ago

    I looked at that calculator. But HP Prime and TI-89 have CAS systems that can do symbolic math, so I prefer to emulate them.

VorpalWay  21 days ago

I run a TI 83+ emulator on my Android phone when I don't have my physical calculator at hand. Same concept, just learned a different brand of calculators.

  • varun_ch  21 days ago

    built-in calculator apps are surprisingly underbaked... I'm surprised neither of the big two operating systems have elected to ship something comparable to a real calculator built in. It would be nice if we could preview the whole expression as we type it..

    I use the NumWorks emulator app whenever I need something more advanced. It's pretty good https://www.numworks.com/simulator/

    • josephg  21 days ago

      That’s certainly an improvement - but why can’t I modify a previous expression? Or tap to select previous expressions?

      What I want is something like a repl. I want to be able to return to an earlier expression, modify it, assign it to a variable, use that variable in another expression, modify the variable and rerun and so on.

      3 replies →

nickorlow  21 days ago

Anytime I have to do some serious amount of math, I have to go dig around and find my TI-84, everything is just burned into muscle memory