Calca

The freedom I feel to write my calculations as If I am writing a regular text and at the end it works like an excel, nothing compares to it.

This app is unique and there is nothing else quite like it. I use it in place of Excel when multiple calculations are required along with extensive text. That said, it’s been several years since it’s been updated so I’m concerned the developer may have abandoned the project. Calca is among my core apps so I’d be open to a subscription offering to compensate the developer and ensure it remains sustainable.

I really dig the approach this app takes to text + free-form calculations. I use Markdown all the time, so that's a bonus, but the app really shines in the way it interprets text and functions in-place. It has far more power under the hood than I could ever use so I only have a few surface-level nitpicks: * Document management on iOS/iPadOs is clunky. * I still hit occasional crasher bugs. * I wish the iOS/iPadOS versions were updated more frequently. I don't think it needs to roll in all the latest platform features, but some bug fixes and polish would be nice.

When you're using the Magic Keyboard, you can't type in numbers anymore. Once you type a number, it switches into this weird overwrite mode, where every number you type overwrites the current number. For example, let's say you want to type 1234. You'll type 1, which will appear. Then 2 overwrites 1. And then 3 overwrites 2. And then 4 overwrites 3. So instead of 1234, you just get 4. Useless.

This is such a useful app, with text documents coming alive as computational documents. Like a spreadsheet in a way, but in a different medium. Truly wonderful

This is easily within my top five favorite utilitarian - ie to do stuff - apps on any platform. I hope the author, at a minimum maintains its currency with now iOS, but preferably continues to revise and expand it. The design of Calca allows one to do quick one-offs and structured analysis with equal ease. I find it a fine balance between calculator, spreadsheet and a Matlab clone like Simo. Its syntax id straight forward and the WYSIWYG structure of the document lets one explain/notate calculations in place. For Python programmers, Pyto has an API to access Calca's engine from within a Python program running on an iDevice which has Calca installed.

Calca is one of my favorite apps. I use it regularly on my phone, laptop, etc. I desperately wish I could use it on the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard folio. Unfortunately, in that context, I'm usually trying to total line items under a 'total +=' line. For every line item, when I start typing digits, the app highlights the entry as though I'm cutting / pasting and does not permit me to enter amount normally. I can work around it -- to a degree -- by separating each digit with a non-numeric character, but I usually just give up and go to a different machine. Hoping the developer will see this and determine what causes / resolves the problem. Huge fan, otherwise, and leaving 5 star review because it works on every other device perfectly.

I left a 1-star review a few years ago because I couldn’t create new sheets (“calculations”) in it. But now it’s the only calculator app I use. Functions. Graphs. Units and unit conversions. Markdown for comments. And all with a pretty intuitive syntax that’s easy to get used to. Now that my kids are doing high-school level math, it’s invaluable for checking their work.

This is really too bad because I have been using Calca for years, and there still isn’t anything that compares. You can work around the input bugs by changing your calculations to text with a #, but it’s a pretty bad experience.

I’ve used Calca for years on iOS and Mac, and I love it for all sorts of computation. I did run into one issue: I recently got an iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard, and it seems to have troubles with the focus system, making numeric entry very, very cumbersome with the Magic Keyboard.