Many years ago, ~2009ish, a friend pointed out that Calculator.app was giving the wrong sign when raising a positive number to a negative exponent. It turned out to be a bug in CFNumber affecting virtually every app.
I noticed the other day that you can type "1+1 sq ft in sq in=" and macOS will helpfully autocomplete the answer: 1,694.0031 square inches. Which is completely wrong. 2 square feet is 288 square inches. It took a few minutes to solve the puzzle of what the hell it is doing.
So take caution trusting Apple's math, which naturally is up to 2x better³—for some value of x.
OptionOfT•1h ago
Thank you for posting this.
I had the same issue with a different calculation. The answer was wrong.
I thought it looks weird because I put a space after the = and the autocomplete does not add that.
handsclean•1h ago
> 1+1 sq ft in sq in=
Fun puzzle. Spoilers ahead:
It seems it’s considering the first 1, and not the second, to be in square meters. “(1+1) sq ft in sq in” works.
puce•16m ago
1+1 sq ft = 11.76 feet^2
jb1991•1h ago
"1+1 sq ft in sq in="
The order of operations here is quite ambiguous. It’s not obvious even to a human reader how you would expect this to be interpreted.
mulmen•14m ago
I honestly can't tell what this would mean other than 2 square feet in inches. What's the other option?
mulmen•2h ago
I’m a recovering Catholic. Sometimes I have intrusive religious thoughts. Recently I have been entertaining the idea that the rapture already happened but only QA was without sin.
Can we get an exception to this? Twitter does not show replies (and many times, the tweet itself) if I am not logged in.
mayneack•1h ago
This is to avoid blogspam not paywalls.
dzhiurgis•40m ago
And is xcancel is charity?
ajdude•1h ago
As soon as I try clicking that page, I got several pop-ups trying to take me to the App Store. When I finally managed to dismiss it, I just got a full screen pop-up asking me to sign in. I can't even view the link you posted on my phone. I wish there was a better way.
thomassmith65•40m ago
In 2025, it's a better user experience to link to a mirror. Whether it's ethical is a different matter. Half the articles posted to HN would go unread if someone didn't post a mirrored version in the comments.
ycui1986•1h ago
The apple’s calculator is so bad, I cannot believe it that tech website used praise this.
If you type too quick, it misses numbers.
If you type too many times “+” it add too many times
If you try to use it as old standalone calculator, things does not calculate right.
It is hard to clear numbers.
Just so stupid.
smallstepforman•1h ago
Its been missing touch input for over 6 years now, still cannot believe their dev teams do not have professional pride to fix such an embaressing flaw.
lukeinator42•1h ago
I don't know if xcancel is getting hugged to death or blocks all of Canada or something, but I've been getting connection refused every time I've clicked on one of their links here.
Marsymars•1h ago
Works in Canada here, but it’s probably just getting rate-limited by Twitter; I’m surprised any Nitter instance works at this point.
LeoPanthera•1h ago
I have fond memories of the Windows 3.1 calculator being unable to calculate 2.01 - 2. (It gives the answer 0.00)
rgovostes•2h ago
I noticed the other day that you can type "1+1 sq ft in sq in=" and macOS will helpfully autocomplete the answer: 1,694.0031 square inches. Which is completely wrong. 2 square feet is 288 square inches. It took a few minutes to solve the puzzle of what the hell it is doing.
So take caution trusting Apple's math, which naturally is up to 2x better³—for some value of x.
OptionOfT•1h ago
I had the same issue with a different calculation. The answer was wrong.
I thought it looks weird because I put a space after the = and the autocomplete does not add that.
handsclean•1h ago
Fun puzzle. Spoilers ahead:
It seems it’s considering the first 1, and not the second, to be in square meters. “(1+1) sq ft in sq in” works.
puce•16m ago
jb1991•1h ago
The order of operations here is quite ambiguous. It’s not obvious even to a human reader how you would expect this to be interpreted.
mulmen•14m ago