Euclid – Scientific calculator for iOS/macOS | Hacker News Reader

Euclid – Scientific calculator for iOS/macOS

euclid.pr1mer.tech

84 pointsarguiot39 comments

I can't help but think of the prototypical Macintosh scientific calculator story.

https://www.pacifict.com/Story/

Wow, what a story! It seems that the story of how they managed to become legitimate after that would be another story.

The iOS app has an in-app purchase for pro features for $4.99 at this time, but the app description doesn’t have a single word about the “pro features” or what the free version offers. I have to wonder if this app has been reviewed by anyone at all before submitting to the App Store. It seems like the common case of having things in one’s head and assuming others would know (or in this case, actually taking the trouble of downloading and trying the app to figure this out).

Hello, the app offers a 7 days free trial. The reason why it’s not a paid app is because Euclid will be available on SetApp (a kind of Netflix for the App Store) and it was the only way to be both accepted on SetApp and the App Store.

My point is that the description on the App Store says nothing about a trial or what's in the pro features. Please read the App Store description as if you're a potential user and see if you can understand what the in-app purchase provides.

I wasn't asking about the trial (which I came to know only on seeing this reply) or why it was so.

It looks like it only works for a week unless you pay

For osx I can recommend Numi: https://numi.app/ It’s the beautiful love child of a text editor and a calculator, that makes it supremely easy to go back and edit your calculations.

For Android I can recommend microMathematic Plus ("μMath+" for short).[0]

[0] https://github.com/mkulesh/microMathematics

I surprised no-one has mentioned pcalc. https://pcalc.com/

It’s a really good engr/sci calc for iOS/MacOS. Unless I’m going for a specific need (Gotta have this exact HP compatibility, need funky plotting, etc) this is what I reach for first.

My vote is for Pcalc too

I tried about 30 calculator apps and they're just all terrible.

I got used to using "dc" (rpn desktop calculator) at the command line on unixy things or python. In real life it's an HP35s. For phone I just ask Siri because I only use it for trivial stuff and it's easier than navigating the input errors on a touch screen.

Have you tried WP34s or WP31s?

Yes. WP34s is nice BUT again it is hopelessly inaccurate with a touch screen.

Interesting - I find it usable on the iPhone X, but of course nowhere near as good as real hardware.

Obviously everyone's needs are different, but what I want from a modern engineering calculator (which I use constantly) is quick calculation of simple things. Anything more complex/verifiable than napkin math, and I'll just use something more serious like Python/Julia, Matlab, any CAS, or whatever engineering/math software I have at my disposal.

So for me, a proper calculator, a tool you master to augment your napkin math, should focus on this:

- Keyboard. Absolutely lowest number of keypresses to enter the problem; the thing that is totally lacking in most non-classic calculators. I can't stress this enough. I should be able to enter all those sophisticated functions without typing their full name and parens. Simple ODEs/integrals should be at my fingertips. I should be able to quickly repeat binary operators for a different argument, and 1/x anything I have on the screen without breaking the flow (on-the-fly calculation often conflicts with that). And many more tricks classic calculators had, which are missing from most modern apps.

- Startup time. It should pop up in less than 100ms. Modern phones and computers are very good at that, but apps sometimes aren't.

- Correctness! It sounds silly, but you can't trust most math applications out there, calculators are surprisingly unreliable, even for simple arithmetic and trigonometry calculations. What math libraries did you use? Or why should I trust your results in general?

I fully agree with you and that’s what Euclid is aiming for. Concerning the correctness, I use the Euler library that I developed myself. The library is extensively tested, and for the moment no user reported a wrong results (except for computations with a result very very low or very very high)

Best not-only-scientific calculator for every OS that has a web browser installed:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/

Looks good, though slightly unfortunate that it says "Euclid is born to be a modern macOS application" on the iOS page. (!)

It lacks the typesetting but I like Soulver which has reimagined the calculator interface. Yep your equation on the left,Smee result in the right, maintaining in a stack of previous calculations that you can edit.

Tydlig is the calculator app that has been the most useful re-design/re-imagining of a calculator for me. Somewhere between a calculator and a spreadsheet, with a nice UX.

http://tydligapp.com/

Capsule review

1. The website is terrible at articulating why this is interesting.

2. The user interface is quite buggy.

3. The user interface is quite beautiful.

4. It’s not obvious exactly what the capabilities are or how do they fit together. E.g. graphing seems completely inscrutable.

5. Despite all this it seems very cool and quite distinct from most of the existing calculators out there. It just isn’t quite mature.

6. The free trial model is going to be a problem. I can’t use this app regularly until it’s a bit more polished, but I am guessing I won’t be able to try it again when it is improvised.

Another calculator I like: http://speedcrunch.org/

For anything beyond that, Sagemath and Jupyter.

I like Numerical^2 for iOS because it remembers your last N calculations so you can go back and get something, and see what it entailed (it shows the entire calculation). Not having this ability made me delete Euclid.

Numerical^2 also has a nice landscape mode that shows all the operations; it slides the keyboard like Euclid does to show them in portrait mode.

Odd, by the way, that the iOS version is more expensive than the macOS version...

The reasons why the iOS version is more expensive is because of the camera system (to scan handwritten equations) which is expensive to maintain.

Some quick comments about the iOS app.

1) it seems quite unintuitive to not be able to drag the cursor along the calculation and to rely on the arrow keys

2) the list is functions is long and not having text search (much like excel) is a major pain for usability. I don’t want to be scrolling ages to find the average function.

3) I also hope that the “commonly used” function list is adaptive, so it adapts to the functions that are used most often by the user

I’ve always used Spotlight on my Macs for quick calculations. Just use CMD space and throw in an equation or unit conversion, get back to the task at hand and jump back into Spotlight and edit, it’s simple and streamlined. However, Catalina has a nasty bug where doing any calculation in Spotlight pegs all cores to 100%. It’s infuriating and I’ve reported it many times as have others.

Just got it. Pretty neat, will use it a bit more and give feedback. From some initial use .. 1) can you make the arithmetic operator 'x' display as an 'x' or '*' rather than a '.' (feels like a decimal). 2) is there a way to delete from the UI rather than only from keyboard. A big improvement from the stock Calculator app. Thanks !

Looks nice, but another ”free” app. Would be nice to at least know what the ”premium” features are that are locked behind that pretty high price of 5,49€.

Downloading and figuring out is just too much trouble.

Windows 10 seems to have made updates to their calculator similarly with a graphing mode, conversions, scientific mode etc.

try Visual RPN calc from store

The iOS app does nothing unless purchased?

There is only a slideshow with the features and a button “Purchase Euclid”.

It might be a glitch. Perhaps a small screen (iPhone SE).

It does stuff on my iPad (iOS 14, fwiw)

Under android you can use droid48 if RPN is your thing

Nice Work!

Not RPN. Bzzzzt. Epic fail!

As Euclid is based on LaTeX, RPN isn’t useful. If you want to use it (which I fully understand), use another app.

RPN could be a fast input method for inputting an expression though. The displayed LaTeX could update accordingly as you enter it in RPN. That could be a killer feature, the speed and intuitiveness (developing your expression as you go) of RPN but with the advantages of algebraic (the ability to see the full expression and modify it).

insect.sh does the job for me

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