Bravo Apple! Calculator app has a memory leak
13 comments
·September 19, 2025rgovostes
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
> 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.
OptionOfT
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.
null
lukeinator42
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.
ycui1986
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.
mulmen
I’m a recovering Catholic. Sometimes I have intrusive religious thoughts. Recently I have been entertaining the idea that the rapture already happened but only QA was without sin.
throwaway984393
[dead]
NaOH
>Please submit the original source.
ajdude
As soon as I try clicking that page, I got several pop-ups trying to take me to the App Store. When I finally managed to dismiss it, I just got a full screen pop-up asking me to sign in. I can't even view the link you posted on my phone. I wish there was a better way.
magnio
Can we get an exception to this? Twitter does not show replies (and many times, the tweet itself) if I am not logged in.
mayneack
This is to avoid blogspam not paywalls.
I have fond memories of the Windows 3.1 calculator being unable to calculate 2.01 - 2. (It gives the answer 0.00)