Bravo Apple! Calculator App Has a Memory Leak

Posted4 months agoActive3 months ago

pfexec

78 points

30 comments

xcancel.comTechstory

heatednegative

Debate

80/100

AppleCalculator AppSoftware Bugs

Key topics

Apple

Calculator App

Software Bugs

The Apple Calculator app is criticized for having a memory leak, with users sharing other bugs and frustrations with the app, while also discussing the broader issue of software quality.

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01Story posted
Sep 18, 2025 at 11:22 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Sep 19, 2025 at 12:00 AM EDT
38m after posting
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14 comments in 0-6h
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Sep 22, 2025 at 1:47 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Discussion (30 comments)

Showing 19 comments of 30

rgovostes

4 months ago

3 replies

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.

handsclean

4 months ago

1 reply

> 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

4 months ago

1+1 sq ft = 11.76 feet^2

jb1991

4 months ago

2 replies

"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

4 months ago

2 replies

I honestly can't tell what this would mean other than 2 square feet in inches. What's the other option?

fzzzy

4 months ago

1 reply

(1 sq ft in sq in) + 1?

vrighter

3 months ago

Which sort of unit is a "sq ft in sq in" and why would they have coded it in the parser as one? It's only ambiguous if it's explicitly coded badly to induce ambiguity.

fluidcruft

4 months ago

Another option could be that it's ill-posed and should just return an error.

rgovostes

4 months ago

There is a perfectly cromulent grammar for a unit-aware calculator:

    <expression without units> [<unit> [in <unit>]]
    <expression with units> [in <unit>]

"1+2 feet in meters" and "1 foot + 1 meter" are both unambiguous. There is no order of operations in terms of how the units bind. The expression "1 foot + 1" is appropriately invalid.

Of course the appropriate care must be paid to interpreting "in" correctly as either a unit or a keyword.

OptionOfT

4 months 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.

ycui1986

4 months ago

1 reply

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

4 months ago

1 reply

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.

TZubiri

4 months ago

Jobs is dead

lukeinator42

4 months ago

1 reply

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

4 months 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.

abnercoimbre

4 months ago

Can we just say thank you for the xcancel link? I hope HN continues that trend for those of us without Twitter/X accounts.

supernes

4 months ago

Apple can save some memory by rewriting it as an Electron app.

pjmlp

4 months ago

That is a lot of calculations, how can a plain calculator leak so much memory to reach 32 GB?

LeoPanthera

4 months ago

I have fond memories of the Windows 3.1 calculator being unable to calculate 2.01 - 2. (It gives the answer 0.00)

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