[HN Gopher] Numi. Calculator app for Mac
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Numi. Calculator app for Mac
Author : caminocorner
Score : 223 points
Date : 2021-03-29 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (numi.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (numi.app)
| erichurkman wrote:
| It's one of the view apps always running on my Mac.
|
| I wish it supported multiple windows, though.
| sushisource wrote:
| Why is it that OSX gets so many of these nice little apps that
| seem pretty easy to make multiplatform but they just... aren't?
| finiteseries wrote:
| The macOS market is generally rich, with a tradition of niche,
| paid software.
| throwawayfire wrote:
| One or two developers working and testing on their own machines
| will have an awful experience trying to make their app work
| multi-platform.
|
| This type of app is going to be valued higher by Mac users.
| SllX wrote:
| Dev preference, time and Cocoa.
| argvargc wrote:
| It's easy to make something multi-platform, but as many lone
| developers on all OS's have experienced, it quickly becomes a
| nightmare to maintain more than one platform.
|
| Given the ease of macOS GUI development to begin with, there
| are more small-time, lone developers making full GUI apps
| there, versus other platforms.
|
| Other platforms have a higher barrier of entry in that regard,
| so the landscape is more conducive to having already started
| out as a team and so developing a more significant app worthy
| of that kind of investment.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Pretty easy as in... the Electron stuff that everyone complains
| about?
| behnamoh wrote:
| To be fair, Windows enjoys many other little/medium/big apps
| that are not available on macOS.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Not a macOS dev, just a customer. The thing I value about the
| platform is that there are lots of these so called "boutique"
| apps. Apps that do a single thing and do it extremely well,
| with a great, native UI, with Mac keyboard shortcuts and all
| the behavior you'd expect on a Mac. And since your average Mac
| user cares a bit more about the experience and aesthetics and
| is, let's face it, usually a bit more affluent than your
| average PC user, there has always been a market for those and
| it's become a bit of a self-fulfilling marketing. Mac users
| expect apps to be focused and good looking and Mac devs know
| that even smaller apps are viable on the platform if done well,
| so the platform is actually full of those nice little apps and
| people come to the Mac for the experience.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Because Mac'ers pay
| Shadonototro wrote:
| macOS is just a joy to develop with, unix like environment,
| beautiful desktop, easy to use frameworks
|
| the environment is clean and enables people to do what they
| want, even if XCode is a piece of garbage shit, it gets the job
| done
|
| the overall quality of Apple apps encourages devs to apply the
| same principles, easy to use and beautifully designed apps
|
| in comparison, when you see official Windows metro/fluent apps
| looking so boring, it doesn't encourage people to develop
| natively
|
| then you have the details that kills it, lack of proper windows
| store, lack of people native way of distributing apps (exe?
| msi? vsx? appbundle? zip my 100's dotnet dlls?) it makes you
| not want to even start
|
| even Microsoft is ditching all that crap and rewriting their
| native apps with electron, wich says a lot about the windows
| ecosystem
| (https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/4/22213300/microsoft-one-
| out...)
| bilalq wrote:
| This is really neat. Google does a pretty good job at providing
| similar answers, but it doesn't support things like summing up
| past queries and needs copy/pasting for more advanced use-cases.
|
| I love the UX here. The simple interface and even the coloring go
| a long way in making it easy to use.
| dublin wrote:
| This is not all that groundbreaking as a calculator, but would be
| a cool parsing addition to a Spreadsheet.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Wow this is awesome! I kind of want this integrated into Alfred
| though...
|
| Edit: it of course already has it
| https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Alfred-Integration
| Exuma wrote:
| wwoowow excellent find, this is amazing
| xixixao wrote:
| Took a long time to start, crashed on first save (~losing all my
| work in that session~ it's back! weird bugs). Some glitches with
| the parsing. But it is so lovely! We should build an open source
| version.
| ksec wrote:
| With Soulver 2 for iOS is not longer available, I wish Numi have
| a paid version for iOS so it could use iCloud Sync between all
| devices.
|
| Edit: And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes
| Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion. Some of
| them has M for million, but most dont.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _And one of the thing I dont understand is all these Notes
| Calculator dont have B for Billion and T for Trillion_
|
| Most people aren't Jeff Bezos!
| bogeholm wrote:
| My personal favorite calculator app for macOS, for at least the
| last 6 years: https://julialang.org/downloads/
|
| ;-)
| neither_color wrote:
| Does it have a widget? The most annoying thing about Big Sur is
| they removed the widget
| mromanuk wrote:
| What do you mean? You can use widgets in Big Sur, WidgetKit
| it's an unified API across all devices (iOS and MacOS).
| mikewhy wrote:
| The calculator widget is no more. IIRC (I haven't looked into
| how widgets are built) there's no way for a calculator widget
| to work. They work in a way where the developer just gets to
| update some data on a schedule.
| mromanuk wrote:
| Yes, you are right about that. Apple doesn't allow it to
| work as a mini app. I suspect, they will unlock more APIs
| to make Widget more interactive on later versions.
| growt wrote:
| It has a status bar mode where it opens in a "pop-up" beneath
| the status bar icon.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I removed the widget "feature" on El Capitan years ago. It was
| useless and better solutions are available.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Do you mean dashboard widgets? Dashboard hasn't been actively
| developed in maybe 10 years now.
|
| If you were still using it I'm interested to know why - I
| stopped because it felt clunky to use and there weren't many
| widgets.
|
| I'm not sure it's much of a criticism of an app if they don't
| have a Dashboard widget.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Widgets in Big Sur are not the same as the old Dashboard:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211789
| danpalmer wrote:
| Yes I'm aware. The comment referred to widget removal in
| Big Sur though, and the only "widgets" I can think of that
| were removed were Dashboard widgets.
|
| Big Sur/iOS 14 widgets don't support interactivity beyond
| single clicks, so I don't see any way a Numi widget would
| be of any benefit.
| Donmario wrote:
| I use it for many years and I have to say I love it
| [deleted]
| samirahmed wrote:
| I have used Numi for several years - and versus Alfred/Google
| variants i have found Numi to be incredibly helpful for most back
| of the hand calculations.
|
| I have yet to find an alternative that is more convenient
|
| 1) Configurable keyboard shortcut to bring this up 2) Good
| units/percentages/bytes support 3) Variable assignments / custom
| functions 4) Long History
| reid wrote:
| Soulver is a similar app for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with shared
| documents in iCloud Drive. Check it out if you're looking for
| something like this to go!
| peterloron wrote:
| AFAIK, Soulver is only for MacOS...
| coldtea wrote:
| Nope, I have it on iOS.
|
| But they've pulled the old version off the iOS store for the
| meantime before releasing the new version.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Would love to see a web version
| kstrauser wrote:
| Soulver is no longer available for iOS and iPadOS. It's been
| pulled until version 3 comes along:
| https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375548200833146884
| reid wrote:
| Wow, I did not know this! Thanks for sharing.
|
| Looks like there is a TestFlight link to get Soulver 2 for
| iOS and iPadOS if anyone is interested in it:
| https://twitter.com/soulver/status/1375368313774215171
|
| I use Soulver 2 on my iPhone and iPad at least once a week
| and couldn't imagine going without it.
| cprecioso wrote:
| And! the parser and calculator engine is free to use for
| personal projects. It is an extremely pleasant SDK to use, and
| super powerful.
|
| https://github.com/soulverteam/SoulverCore
| nerdponx wrote:
| I love this model. Open source the library/SDK, then build
| your own paid application on top of it.
| selykg wrote:
| Soulver is so good. I use it almost every single day. It's just
| a great app and isn't that expensive. One of those apps I
| completely miss when it's not installed on a new device.
| [deleted]
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| https://soulver.app
| evanmoran wrote:
| Does anyone have thoughts on how natural it feels to use ':'
| instead '=' for variable creation? From a distance it has a nice
| elegance, but it is interesting how few programming languages
| make this choice.
| SamBam wrote:
| I've always felt similarly. Obviously using "=" comes from math
| ("let x = 1"), but I've always felt it was such a barrier to a
| newcomer. Both because of variable creation (it looks more like
| the answer to a problem, rather than the initial premise) and
| because then we have to add ungainly new symbols such as "=="
| and "===" to test for equality.
| nyxtom wrote:
| Definitely has a programming language kind of syntax to it, very
| nice
| BozeWolf wrote:
| What is wrong with "bc" ;-) half joking, anybody else who uses
| bc? I am by no means an expert, just using the regular
| add/multiply and sometimes a variable.
|
| This looks way better though.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's my go-to calc too but I always start 'bc -l' in case I
| need decimals.
| erk__ wrote:
| my favorite calculator app is emacs's calc-mode, it is probably
| one of the nicest RPN calculators on desktop
| kevincox wrote:
| This is what I do. I do it so frequently that I have a small
| script `b` so that I can `b 'l(156)'` or just type `b` to get a
| shell with the match library loaded. Seems funny to alias a 2
| char command but I often prefer passing the expression on the
| command line.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I alias 'clear' to 'c' because I use it so often and have to
| immediately set it up on any new machine.
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| Try control-l
| holistio wrote:
| So that's $25 for Spotlight, or am I missing something?
| jffry wrote:
| For how I use it, it lives inbetween Spotlight and Numbers.
| Here's examples of the types of things I can recall using Numi
| for in the recent past: https://i.imgur.com/u4EdGbr.png
|
| It's list of features is quite extensive:
| https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi/wiki/Documentation
|
| Plus I don't mind paying for a simple, high-quality tool that I
| use all the time!
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| This gets posted regularly but not often discussed. Here's one of
| the few prior postings with comments, from six years ago, fwiw:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837802
| mromanuk wrote:
| I love the design & minimalism of the website and the App.
| Abhinav2000 wrote:
| My favourite IOS calculator app (for those who are RPN minded).
| Love this little free gem!
|
| https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/rpn-30/id1451413517
| trasz wrote:
| Also Free42, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629 -
| free reimplementation of the best RPN calculator ever, and with
| niceties such as tactile feedback.
| TomJansen wrote:
| Hmm when I need to calculate something I just run python in the
| terminal, using the underscore to access previous results in the
| prompt
| argvargc wrote:
| What about privacy/tracking? Do queries ever leave the machine,
| in any form?
| bilalq wrote:
| It's a good question. The app doesn't look fully open source,
| but I suspect they'd have to. Currency conversions aren't
| fixed, after all.
| coldtea wrote:
| Wouldn't that just require an incoming list of up-to-date
| currency conversions (fetched on each run, and perhaps cached
| for an hour or so)?
|
| They could do those even without the user asking for any
| currency calculation -- so in practice no data would ever
| leave to show anything about actual queries (which would be
| the case if you e.g. wanted to calculate X euro in yen and
| they asked for the current euro/yen values only).
|
| Plus, you can add it to Little Snitch or some free such, and
| it wont be able to do any talking anywhere.
| Exuma wrote:
| How does this compare to Soulver?
| danpalmer wrote:
| For simple sums, about the same, but 20% cheaper. Soulver is a
| fair bit more powerful, but I own Soulver (albeit the old v2)
| and haven't used much from the extended feature set.
| orangepanda wrote:
| Hijacking the thread. Does anyone know of a simple paid
| calculator app for iPad?
|
| They all seem to be riddled with ads or obnoxious "cute" features
| to justify the price
| timo555 wrote:
| I like Tydlig
| imeron wrote:
| I love Tydlig
| enturn wrote:
| There's a port of the Windows calculator on the Uno Platform
| that's ad free, although not paid.
| https://github.com/unoplatform/calculator
| kstrauser wrote:
| I love PCalc. It's not "simple" by default, but you can make it
| into what you want.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've used PCalc for _years_ (I 'm pretty sure that I started
| using it when MacOS 9 was still the main operating system).
|
| It also works for iOS and WatchOS.
| jameshart wrote:
| Love Calca on iOS.
|
| http://calca.io/
| imaginamundo wrote:
| I use a lot and tried to build a simple version for the browser
| (to use on windows). Not even remotely close to feature set but
| still works on basic stuffs.
|
| https://imaginamundo.github.io/math-notes/
| erk__ wrote:
| Another similar web app is CalcuLaTeX
| https://mkhan45.github.io/CalcuLaTeX-Web/
| fish45 wrote:
| Hey, that's me.
|
| I think Numi's more oriented towards a general calculator,
| whereas CalcuLaTeX is more for longer form problems or
| documents, although I know that at least a few people use it
| like a scratchpad. I'll definitely take some inspiration from
| Numi though.
|
| By the way, the new website for CalcuLaTeX is
| https://calcula.tech
| system2 wrote:
| Very great but as I kept watching the demo video on the homepage,
| I felt like I was watching to learn python. Is there an ubuntu
| version of this?
| xixixao wrote:
| I'd so pay for this if it was a plugin for Bear.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Does bear do plugins? Genuine ask, I'm not seeing anything on
| the goog, but would also pay for this in bear too.
| peruvian wrote:
| I like numi but I already own Soulver.
| ianferrel wrote:
| The final example in their intro video doesn't make sense to me.
| Can someone explain it?
|
| Here's the text: price = $8 times 5 $40 fee = 8% 8 % fee on price
| in Euro 39.48 EUR
|
| What does that mean? "fee on price" should mean "fee times
| price", right? So 8% of $40. That's nowhere near 39.48 EUR. Could
| it mean "price after fee is deducted"? But if so, it must have
| been made during a time when EUR was worth almost 8% less than
| dollars? Did that ever happen?
| tcskeptic wrote:
| I suspect it means $40USD in Euro (at about .914 to the dollar)
| then add 8% to that amount.
|
| 5 * 8 = 40 40 * .914 = 36.56 36.56 * 1.08 = 39.48 (ish)
| [deleted]
| lordleft wrote:
| I find that calculators remain weirdly unergonomic on most
| Operating Systems. There are so many times where I want to do
| some quick math but feel hobbled by the insistence of calculator
| software writers to ape physical calculator design -- Numi seems
| like a cool step in the right direction
| 0x_rs wrote:
| I've found programs such as SpeedCrunch[0] to be extremely more
| comfortable to use than calculators imitating "classic"
| designs.
|
| [0] https://speedcrunch.org/
| smusamashah wrote:
| Looks like improved version of CCalc
| Darmody wrote:
| Speedcrunch is one of the apps that I always keep open. I
| just alt+ab to it when I need something and do some quick
| operations with the numerical keyboard and it's able to
| handle stuff for programming and CS in general.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| There's always a REPL close by for users that are technical
| enough.
| bartvk wrote:
| I used `bc` for years and years
| sorbits wrote:
| On the Commodore 64 the OS was a REPL and ? was shorthand
| for PRINT, therefore you could type `? 2+2` and you would
| get the result printed.
|
| This felt so intuitive to me that ever since, I've ensured
| my machines had ? do calculations in the shell (by aliasing
| it to whatever could do math).
| asdff wrote:
| This is why I still use bc
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| I didn't even know there's a calculator app on macOS. I simply
| write formulas into Spotlight, and if I need history or
| variables or anything serious I launch an Octave prompt.
| coldtea wrote:
| The built-in macOS calculator also has scientific and
| progamming modes, and even RPN.
|
| There's also Grapher, macOS built-in equation plotter.
| apazzolini wrote:
| If you're using OS X, try using Spotlight or Alfred directly
| (Keypirinha[0] is a reasonable Windows alternative) - just type
| in `1 + 2` and you get the answer without launching a special
| app. There are plugins for conversions as well.
|
| [0]. https://keypirinha.com/
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I always use spotlight this way (it's almost the only way I
| use spotlight), but it unfortunately covers up a ton of the
| screen while you use it.
| leokennis wrote:
| I love Alfred, also for this reason.
|
| These days, DuckDuckGo is my go to calculator. I can type
| math and conversions and get the answer. And if I don't, I do
| the !wa bang and let Wolfram Alpha handle it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Chrome will do math in the URL bar.
| derimagia wrote:
| Windows also has Powertoys Run https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/powertoys/run
|
| There are of course a bunch of third party apps and I've used
| many of them across multiple OS.
| ansk wrote:
| Spotlight correctly interprets numerical expressions, but it
| also treats them as search queries for the entire filesystem,
| resulting in an expensive retrieval process after every
| keystroke. It's the most convenient, so I use it anyways, but
| the end result is that cpu starts to overheat for a query as
| simple as 1 + 2.
| geoelectric wrote:
| Think Alfred may be more efficient here, since I've never
| noticed that issue at all.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Do we have the dev here?
|
| I love the idea of a fast and tiny calculator notebook. I was a
| big Mathematica user (as long as my uni paid for the crazy
| expensive licence) for even simple calculations, and this would
| almost scratch my itch.
|
| I'm saying almost because it needs a bit more work, at least some
| more quantities and units, like speed, voltage, power etc. And it
| all breaks down if you try do a calculation where the
| quantity/units change, i.e. the units disappear (because the app
| doesn't understand the formula) and you can't use the conversions
| anymore. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or that I absolutely
| need it, but the $24 price is no joke.
| [deleted]
| sdevonoes wrote:
| Nice app. Based on the source code
| (https://github.com/nikolaeu/numi) it's not clear to me how the
| .dmg is built. Is it explained somewhere?
| bilalq wrote:
| It doesn't look like it's fully open source. I'm just seeing
| community extensions and the Alfred plugin on the github page.
| bbodi wrote:
| Since others already mentioned many fantastic alternatives, let
| me share mine: https://bbodi.github.io/notecalc3/
| jp0d wrote:
| Nice one, mate
| elcritch wrote:
| How difficult would something like this be to port to Visual
| Studio?
|
| P.S. looks like a great app!
| vargasz wrote:
| What would it take to have this as a desktop app?
|
| As I see it it is rust and wasm. It would be nice to have some
| note about the architecture in the docs, maybe someone would
| pick it up to make a desktop app from it too.
| calylex wrote:
| There are at least two super quick ways I always do calculations
| on a Mac first by pressing CMD+Space for Spotlight search and
| just typing in the math expression and in Chrome address bar
| without having to press the enter key.
| notimpotent wrote:
| This also works in Win10: Windows Key + S, type your query,
| immediate results in the start menu window.
|
| Support fuzzy terms as well. ex. 100ml in cups
| jimvdv wrote:
| Numi looks awesome! My favorite calculator app so far is
| Tydlig[0], too bad it's has not been updated in a couple years. I
| remember a really good talk by the creator (Andreas Karlsson),
| but I can't seem to find it, anyone has any idea what I'm talking
| about?
|
| [0]. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tydlig/id721606556
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(page generated 2021-03-29 23:00 UTC)