Tuesday, October 24, 2017

iOS Calculator Bug

Stephen Heaps:

Is the iOS 11 Calculator slow for anyone else? Do button anims need to complete now? 1+2+3+4 at this speed should work fine…

1+2+3+4 = 28?

It’s the + after the 2 isn’t hit. But it should be hit. Look how slow I’m tapping!

Dave Peck:

Here’s a fun one: open the iOS 11 calculator. Rapidly type 1 + 2 + 3. Odds are you won’t get 6…

Javier Soto:

Apple software is buggy, but surely the iOS calculator can still do 1+2+3 correctly.

Mike Rundle:

Calculator in iOS 11 has such a long animation (and blocks all other touches) that it’s unusable. Burn it down.

I hadn’t seen this bug before, probably because I use PCalc, but I was easily able to reproduce it, even with Reduce Motion on.

See also: Reddit.

Update (2017-10-24): Marco Scheurer:

First (only?) default app coded in Swift and “Swift code is safe by design, yet also produces software that runs lightning-fast”. The irony.

Dave Mark:

When you hit the plus sign for the second time, the calculator app goes into some odd state. Not sure if this is intentional, or a bug, but either way, this is not what you’d expect.

Chris Espinosa:

In case you’re tempted to write a Radar on this, 70+ people have beaten you to it.

Update (2017-10-25): Rosyna Keller:

The interesting part is that this is a very old bug. Just now getting news.

Peter Maurer:

This made me realize that bug marketing is a thing. If you want an annoying, but fairly inconsequential bug fixed, find a way to make it go viral.

Update (2017-10-26): See also: MacRumors.

Update (2017-10-29): Nacho Soto is seeing a similar bug on macOS 10.13.

Update (2017-10-30): Juli Clover:

The new iOS 11.2 beta, released to developers this morning, addresses a Calculator animation issue that’s been present since iOS 11 was released to the public in September and throughout the iOS 11 beta testing process.

Update (2017-11-13): See also: The Talk Show.

Update (2017-12-02): Rob Griffiths:

The Calculator bug persists in iOS 11.2. It’s not as bad as it was before, but it’s definitely still there. You don’t even have to tap super fast; I can make it happen whether I’m using two fingers or one. As long as a couple of button taps are within a reasonably-quick amount of time, you’ll get the wrong answer.

Update (2018-01-31): Benjamin Mayo:

In iOS 11.3, the Calculator works when typing quickly AND the fade animation on the buttons is back. Happy that they went back and did it properly after the quick-fix in 11.2 where they got rid of the animation altogether.

2 Comments RSS · Twitter


My dad upgraded to iOS 11 the other day and was complaining about it doing wrong math, treating 1 + 2 / 3 as 1 + (2 / 3)—which *I* know is order of operations, but it's not how simple calculators work, and I think to most people this app models a simple calculator—but in exploring that, we were also able to reproduce some circumstances/calculations where pressing an operator displayed an intermediate result (as if you'd hit = followed by the next operator) and thereby the correct/intended final result. That's even worse, because it's completely inconsistent—sometimes in "order-of-operations mode" and sometimes in "normal calculator mode."


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