mathpunk

dewme said:

anonymouse said:

TomPMRI said:

It looks like the iPad calculator doesn’t support RPN (Reverse Polish Notation), a non-starter for me (PCalc does). Are there any settings for the iPad calculator that allow a switch to what is the “RPN Mode” in macOS? If not, there should be.

Realistically, the number of people who actually care about RPN is a very very tiny (but vocal) minority, so I'm not surprised it 

And a lot of those same folks are still running vi/vim as their primary text editor on their latest Macs. Once you’re comfortable with a tool it becomes second nature so there is little motivation to change. It’s analogous to comparing the standard keyboard/typewriter layout that was originally designed to slow typists down to reduce mechanical jams vs the Dvorak keyboard that is based more on frequent letter combinations and reduced reach.

I use RPN calculators and emacs not vi, for whatever it’s worth. After you learn how to use it, RPN is faster and more efficient, but I suppose most people are never exposed to it and would not learn it on their own.

mikethemartian said:

Can you write a second order polynomial and have it give you the roots using the quadratic equation?

Degree, not order.

It's interesting that Apple will do whatever the Chinese government wants without uttering a peep, but they whine kicking and screaming about any regulation whatsoever in the EU.  I say this as an AAPL investor as well as a user, but Apple management really seems to have a problem reading the room sometimes.  Anyone could see this was coming, but Apple seems to want to cling onto their precious App Store margins no matter what; it's as if they know the hardware revenue is going to slow down and they are scrambling to do anything to maintain revenue.  In the long term, I think this is going to hurt Apple, as they could give up some the services margin in exchange for good will with developers and government regulated markets and be better off down the road.  Right now they are just alienating a lot of people by digging their heels in, and they still don't have a modem of their own, and their software stack is a mess.

Thank you very much for writing this article.  I am very sensitive to display flickering, and find that OLED displays in general are very problematic for me due to the induced headaches and eye fatigue.  I think it is possible that at some point in the future, it may be seen as a huge mistake to use OLED and similar display technologies that use PWM due to the health impacts that are largely being ignored.  

I think Apple has lost its focus.  They can't even build a modem, but sure, let's build a car!  Siri is a mess, the Swift compiler has a lot of problems, all sorts of software is buggy, they still can't figure out what to do with the iPad, and now there is the Vision Pro which has no clear reason to exist.