Summary of changes in version 1.3.0

• Native iOS 11 Build
• Support for iPhone X Super Retina HD Display
• Major update of UI code
• Code optimizations & clean-up
• Minor bug fixes

Support for iPhone X Super Retina HD Display

This version of Sci:Pro Calculator includes fixes for the display layout problems related to the new iPhone X Super Retina HD Display. Updates to the underlying user interface code have been implemented to let the app fully utilize the iPhone X display in both portrait and landscape orientations. In addition, new high resolution user interface images have been incorporated that take full advantage of these new display resolutions while still leaving room for potential new higher-resolution devices in the future. The bottom line is that Sci:Pro Calculator looks really sharp on the new iPhone X.

Major update of UI code

A major focus of this release was a complete overhaul of the underlying user interface implementation. All areas of the app have been reworked to support adaptive layout capabilities and APIs. In the short term these changes fix some layout problems experienced by iPhone X users. In the long term these changes should enable the app to better support new devices as soon as soon as they are released. Future versions of Sci:Pro Calculator will build on this work to provide even more dynamic display handling capabilities.

Code Optimizations

As with earlier releases, application code has been cleaned-up and optimized to use the latest APIs and remove references to functionality that was deprecated by Apple in newer versions of iOS. Most of these changes happen behind the scenes and have very little impact on how the app looks and behaves. The primary benefit is the app should have better performance and reliability when running on newer versions of iOS and on the latest iPhone and iPad devices.

Available Now

Version 1.3.0 of Sci:Pro Calculator is currently available. If you like the app please be sure to show your support by rating each new version in the App Store—new downloads and ratings help to ensure the ongoing development and support of the app. Thanks!

Summary of changes in version 1.2.5

• 64-bit support
• Scientific notation for display, history, and e-mail values
• Pop-up display mode selection menu (long-press gesture)
• Fixed UI layout bug for iPhone 6+, 6s+, 7+ devices
• Fixed issue with iPhone devices running in zoomed mode
• Code optimizations & clean-up
• Expanded help/how-to information
• Assorted bug fixes

64-bit Support

All the low-level code and libraries used by Sci:Pro Calculator have been updated to use 64-bit code. These changes are not visible to the user but will result in better application performance on the latest versions of iOS and iPhone & iPad devices. These changes should also remove any performance warning messages that were sometimes displayed by iOS when running older versions of the app.

Scientific Notation

Sci:Pro Calculator now displays values using scientific notation wherever possible rather than E-notation which was used in older versions of the app. While scientific notation is used by default in this new version of the app, users can revert to the original format by enabling the Use 'E' notation' option in the Settings Panel.

When scientific notation is enabled in the app it will be used for values shown in the main display area, in the calculation history, and in e-mail. For non-HTML e-mails generated by the application, a text equivalent is used rather than a formatted value: 1.2345x10^7 rather than 1.2345x107. Scientific notation is not used when copying and pasting values to and from the app—E-notation continues to be used in those cases since it has wider support in other applications.

Pop-up Display Mode Menu

Quick display mode changes are now possible without going into the Settings Panel. While using the Basic or Scientific modes of the calculator a long press gesture in the display area will reveal the Display Mode Selection Menu which can be used to view or change the current display mode. Selecting a new display mode option will immediately change the display mode used by the calculator while selecting the current display mode or tapping outside the menu will dismiss the menu without changing the display mode. This works for any of the display modes that can be selected in the settings panel: Standard, Scientific, and Engineering.

Fixed UI layout for iPhone 6+, 6s+, 7+ devices

Despite a fix in an earlier version of the app, some users have continued to report UI layout problems while running Sci:Pro Calculator on the larger iPhone-Plus devices. While the exact cause of this issue has not been identified, all the related code has been reworked for version 1.2.5 and successfully tested on iPhone 6+, 6s+, and 7+ devices. Please let use know if you encounter any problems with the app not utilizing all the available display space on your iPhone 6+, 6s+, or 7+ devices. In addition, a display problem that popped up in version 1.2.4 for iPhone-plus users running with the display zoom setting set to 'zoomed' has also been corrected.

Code Optimizations

As part of this release a lot of the underlying application code was cleaned-up and optimized to use newer APIs and remove references to functionality that was deprecated by Apple in newer versions of iOS. These changes are largely internal and have had very little impact on how the app looks and behaves. However, the end result should be better reliability and performance when using the app on new versions of iOS and on the latest iPhone and iPad devices.

Expanded Help and How-to Information

The Help/How-tos information section has been updated to include information about application changes and new features. New reference information for Scientific Mode operator and function keys has also been added to provide a basic overview of what each key is used for. A Known Issues and Limitations section has been added to outline some user reported issues to be aware of while using Sci:Pro Calculator.

Available Now

Version 1.2.5 of Sci:Pro Calculator is currently available. If you like the app please be sure to show your support by rating each new version in the App Store—new downloads and ratings help to ensure the ongoing development and support of the app. Thanks!

iOS 8 Display Issues

A low-level change in iOS 8 has caused the mechanism used to display symbols/images in Sci:Pro Calculator to stop working. This bug affects all users running the app on iOS 8 and the result is that many of the images used on button labels (especially in Scientific and Programmer modes) and in expressions shown in the history view will not display properly. This is considered a critical usability issue and a fix has been submitted to App Store for review. Anybody that has upgraded to iOS 8 should wait for the new release to become available before using Sci:Pro Calculator. The new release should be available very soon.

iPhone 6/6+ Support

Please note that neither the current version (v1.2.1) nor the forthcoming release (v1.2.2) of Sci:Pro Calculator have been designed to specifically support the new iPhone 6/6+ devices. Apple has claimed that applications designed to run on the iPhone 5s should run in a scaled compatibility mode on the new devices until they are updated to directly support the new hardware. I have not yet been able to independently confirm that Sci:Pro Calculator runs properly on either of the new iPhone devices yet. Some preliminary testing has been done using the developer tools and device simulators which has shown that there may be some potential layout issues with the keypad and LCD views. As a result, users may find that Sci:Pro Calculator does not properly utilize the higher resolution screens on the iPhone 6/6+ while running either v1.2.1 or v1.2.2. I would love to hear from any iPhone 6/6+ users regarding their experiences running Sci:Pro Calculator on the new hardware. (if interested, please use the contact page)

Work is currently underway to update Sci:Pro Calculator to fully utilize the new larger displays on the new iPhone 6/6+. A new version will be released as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience, I hope to have something out in the near future.

Summary of changes in version 1.2.1:

• Selectable Display Modes (Standard, Scientific, Engineering)
• New Programmer Mode Functions
• Delete/Clear Key Option (for Basic Mode)
• Advanced Settings Panel
• Bug fixes

Selectable Display Modes

A new Display Mode option has been added to the in-app settings panel that lets users select how numbers should be formatted when using the Basic or Scientific modes of the calculator. The following options are available:

Standard

Display numbers rounded to specified number of decimal places. Scientific notation is used for values that exceed the display size or precision. (Default Display Mode)

Scientific

Display numbers using normalized scientific notation. (1 digit left of the decimal point, a specified number of decimal places, and an exponent).

Engineering

Display numbers using engineering notation. (Value with a specified number of significant digits followed by an exponent that is a multiple of 3).

NOTE: Display mode settings apply to floating point values only and are not used when in Programmer Mode.

Programmer Mode Functions

The layout of keys in Programmer Mode has been modified slightly to accommodate some new functions. The following keys have been added to Programmer Mode on all supported devices:

• Shift-Key
• Modulo Operator
• Parentheses Keys
• Bit Count
• Random(x)
• X++
• X--
• Byte-Flip
• Word-Flip

Delete/Clear Key Option

An new option for enabling a combined delete & clear key function in Basic Mode has been added to the in-app settings panel. When enabled, the clear key will act like the Delete/Backspace Key when pressed and released normally; it will behave like the Clear Key if pressed and held for a short duration. This functionality was added by an end-user request to improve the usability of Basic Mode which did not have a dedicated delete/backspace key. The Advanced Settings panel provides a setting for fine-tuning the length of time the clear key must be held down before a clear operation is performed.

Advanced Settings Panel

Sci:Pro Calculator now provides an Advanced Settings Panel that can be used to tweak some of the low-level behavior of the application. Advanced settings are located in the 'Sci:Pro Calc' section of the iOS Settings App. Most users will not need to change any of these settings. The following list contains some examples of what can be changed:

• Display Zero Exponents
• Display Trailing Zeros
• Delete/Clear Delay
• etc.

Available Now

Version 1.2.1 of Sci:Pro Calculator is currently available. If you like the app please be sure to show your support by rating each new version in the App Store—new downloads and ratings help to ensure the ongoing development and support of the app. Thanks!

Summary of changes in version 1.2.0:

• New floating point engine (improved accuracy and rounding)
• Option to enable or disable grouping separators (thousands, etc.)
• Binary radix support for Programmer Mode (Incl. entry & conversion)
• Improved international number handling (using current Region Format)
• Bug fixes

Floating point

The floating point engine has been overhauled to be more accurate and reliable. This change improves the accuracy of results to more decimal places than the earlier versions were capable of. In addition, a new formatted output handler has been created that should eliminate some of the odd output rounding errors that popped up from time-to-time in older versions of the app. One side effect of these changes is that the new version of the application supports a slightly smaller exponent range than the previous version did— though it is still larger than many of the other calculator apps provide.

NOTE: Users upgrading to version 1.2.0 may have values in their calculation history, memory, or main display replaced with 'Error' values if they exceed the exponent range of the new version.

Configurable separators

Earlier versions of Sci:Pro Calculator automatically used a grouping separator when formatting numbers for Basic and Scientific modes. Version 1.2.0 adds a new "Show Separators" option to the settings panel that enables users to disable this functionality as desired. In addition, the app is now configured to use the appropriate country-specific separator character as defined by the iOS Region Format setting for the device.

Binary radix mode

Binary radix support has been added to Programmer Mode. Previous versions of the app provided a binary view capability but only supported entry of values in Octal, Decimal, or Hexadecimal. Version 1.2.0 adds binary to the list of supported radix formats and enables users to directly enter binary values in addition to the other formats.

Region-specific number formats

International number formats are now supported. Earlier versions of Sci:Pro Calculator defaulted to the 'United States' formatting rules when displaying numbers in the main calculator display, in the history view, or when parsing strings pasted in from other applications. Version 1.2.0 now uses the appropriate grouping separators and decimal indicators for the Region Format selected in the iOS settings panel.

NOTE: while many different regions were tested, it was not possible to test every one of them. Please let us know if you encounter formatting problems for a specific region.

Available soon

As always, all known bugs were corrected prior to submitting this release to the App Store. In addition, an elongated test cycle was used due to the nature of some of the changes that were made. We're pleased with the results and think that version 1.2.0 should be the most stable and feature complete version of Sci:Pro Calculator yet. We look forward to getting feedback from users once it becomes available online.

Sci:Pro Calculator has gone through a lot of testing but some bugs undoubtedly remain. If you happen upon a bug while using the app please use our contact page to report it so that it can be fixed as quickly as possible. We're grateful to everyone who has reported bugs—especially those who have given us a chance to fix or respond to a problem before giving a bad review in the App Store—it's definitely appreciated.

The next version of Sci:Pro Calculator is almost complete and ready for testing. The new version (v1.1.0) will add full compatibility for iOS 7 along with some new features like in-app help that didn't make the first release. The update will also correct all known bugs in the current version of the app. This will be released as soon as possible.

Having the application featured by Apple in the 'New & Noteworthy' section of the App Store was definitely a pleasant surprise—especially after only being in the store for about a week. The prominent placement in the store has certainly had a big impact on the total number of downloads for the app. We're seeing a large number of downloads from all over the world even though the app has not yet been localized for countries outside the U.S.A. We're definitely excited to see the app getting out to a large number of users in such a short time.

Even though Sci:Pro Calculator is getting a lot of downloads it has not yet resulted in many user ratings being given to it (either good or bad). This may be due in part to not including reminders or links in the app to rate it. We're reluctant to degrade the user experience by including self-promotion aids or advertising but can see why some developers have opted to do so. We'll take a wait-and-see approach and determine if this needs to be tweaked in an upcoming release. In the meantime we're grateful to the users that have already given us feedback and have rated the application—thank you!

So far the launch of our first iOS App has been going great. We have had some good feedback and just a couple minor bugs reported which are mainly related to running on iOS-7 Beta which was never tested prior to release. We want to thank everyone that has helped us identify these issues; they will be fixed in the next release.

Please keep the feedback coming. All we ask is that if you are using the app and like it, please take a moment to rate it. If you don't like the app or are having trouble using it, please use our contact page to let us know why—we'll do our best to address your problems in future releases.

Once the app has been approved and is available in the App Store we’ll let everyone know.

In preparation for getting things ready for beta testing we did several rounds of profiling using Instruments in Xcode to search for internal problems such as memory leaks and performance bottlenecks. This was an important step in the development cycle and the process did turn up a couple of memory leaks in unexpected places. The biggest problem was eventually traced back to an issue related to the Core Graphics library ‘CGContextDrawPDFPage’ function. It turns out that the content of some PDF files will cause the function to leak depending on the information encoded in the file. While simplifying the graphics contained in the file could circumvent the issue, it didn’t seem like a reliable long-term solution so we moved the vector images to another format and stopped using PDF. Performance profiling turned up some areas we were able to tweak to gain higher animation frame rates for some of the sequences in the application although we ended up settling for lower performance than we wanted on older devices like the original iPad.

Generally speaking we’re very pleased with how well the development process went. This was our first major app development project on iOS and the process was smooth, the tools worked great, and we have really come to appreciate the breadth and depth of the functionality in the iOS development platform. We’re looking forward to an uneventful beta test process followed by a successful release to the App Store.

For developers, WWDC 2013 proved to be a very informative week and Apple announced a new set of tools and technologies for developing apps for the upcoming iOS 7 platform. The beta version of Xcode 5 has been released along with a beta version of the iOS 7 SDK. After watching the keynote and a bunch of the developer sessions I’m definitely excited by what I’ve seen. It looks like Apple has added some really nice features to the new version of Xcode that will make development faster and easier than before. In addition, they have added a bunch of great new functionality to the SDK that can be used to add some really cool functionality and interactivity to iOS applications going forward.

Due to the extent of changes being made to iOS it looks like some work may be required to get existing applications adapted to the new user interface guidelines and APIs but nothing too extensive. We’re currently wrapping up development on our first iOS application which is targeting iOS 5 but once that has been completed we look forward to making the changes needed to take advantage of iOS 7 and having it ready to go by the time it releases in the fall.