![]() ![]() Tap a button to drop a die on screen and watch it roll and bounce with realistic physics until it settles. Anyone familiar with tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons will instantly recognize the designations-D4 for a four-sided die, D6 for the traditional six-sided die, and so on, all the way up to D100, which is useful for generating percentages. It displays a wooden box, into which you can drop any combination of multi-sided dice. ![]() Dice apps are nothing new-the App Store is littered with them-but you won’t find another one with nearly the same level of detail.ĭice is as skeuomorphic as an app can be. Now Thomson has brought that same level of tech enthusiasm to random number generators with Dice by PCalc for the iPhone and iPad ($1.99). Whenever Apple announces a new technology, whether it’s watchOS, tvOS, 3D Touch, Siri Shortcuts, or even ARKit, you can be sure that PCalc will be among the first apps to adopt it. ![]() James Thomson, the developer of PCalc, is famous for over-engineering his popular and long-standing calculator app. #1659: Exposure notifications shut down, cookbook subscription service, alarm notification type proposal, Explain XKCD.#1660: OS updates for sports and security, Drobo in bankruptcy, why TidBITS doesn't cover rumors.#1661: Mimestream app for Gmail, auto-post WordPress headlines to Twitter and Mastodon, My Photo Stream shutting down.#1662: New Macs, 12 top OS features for 2023, vertical tabs in Web browsers, watchOS 9.5.1.#1663: Exploring the Apple Vision Pro, 12 more OS features coming in 2023, new Apple service features, Apollo shuts down.See my other AppTastic Tuesday reviews here. Thanks to TLA Systems, the makers of PCalc for iOS, for giving me a download of the app for this review. See the full feature list here, and look at many more screenshots here. PCalc is a fantastic app, and the last non-graphing, scientific calculator app you’ll ever put on your phone. Need to quickly figure a tip, or something else? Without even unlocking your device, swipe down to the Today view and find the best-looking, most functional widget you’ll probably see on iOS 8:Įven Apple’s own Calculator app does not have access from the swipe-down Today view. I can’t say whether science and math students can put away their TI-80-whatevers, but they should at least download PCalc first. Note the Ticker Tape underneath the number up top… that’s your computation history! You can even swipe back from the results screen to have PCalc re-perform your last operations. You can do more when you rotate to landscape mode: There are also a ton of functions this app can perform that I probably would have loved in my high school Calculus class, but would have trouble with now. It has a bunch of Constants stored, to which you can add your own: With PCalc, I have my answer within a few taps: ![]() Listening to the new Kendrick Lamar, I might want to know how many square miles 40 acres is. My favorite feature–that I’ve not seen in any of the other five or six calculator apps I had downloaded and promptly deleted from my phone–is that PCalc can run conversions for you: currency, in the kitchen (good for those of us who still can’t go fluid ounces to cups, which is ALL of us), energy units and more. It includes an extensive set of unit conversions, a paper tape, an optional RPN mode, engineering and scientific notation, as well as support for hexadecimal, octal and binary calculations. PCalc is ideal for scientists, engineers, students, programmers, or indeed anybody looking for a feature-rich calculator for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. I liked that view so much I didn’t even think to look for different display options till weeks later. PCalc functions with zero lag, and has a really nice layout, which you can change to suit your preferences: There is a free, “lite” version available here. Below I review the definitely-worth-its-$9.99 app. PCalc is a beautifully-designed, dynamic calculator for iPhone and iPad, available in the App Store. Looking for a good scientific calculator that your kids (or roommate) won’t make off with, because it’s downloaded as an app to your iOS device? (Which your kids or roommate might also abscond with, but still….) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |