Graphing Calculator Viewer App Reviews

this is just a demo, pretty much a video demonstration of what the paid app can do. On the other hand, the paid app looks great, I just dont see the point of this "free version"

I use GC every day to explore the physics of slacklines. Indispensable.

In the past 30 years, Ive been stunned speechless by computers on several occasions. I remember the first Macintosh, the first computer speech, the first time I was able to log into a computer thousands of miles away, and the first time I saw Graphing Calculator. By now, most of these feelings have dulled, but Im still in love with Graphing Calculator. Steve Jobs often talks about software thats so powerful, and yet so effortless, that its magical. When you use Graphing Calculator, you get an almost-physical feeling of HOW MATH WORKS. If you have, say y = (some big long equation including x), and you want to solve for x, pick up x and y and drag them around. WHILE YOU ARE DRAGGING, GC will update the equation, keeping it accurate. Its easier than untangling the wires on your earbuds! Type something like y = sin t x -- GC will draw the graph, and add a slider for t. Yank on the slider, and see the results. Click a play button, and it will slide back and forth. Aha, t is affecting "frequency"! Now you understand. You can, of course, grab a chart and drag it for a different perspective. Zoom in and out. Rotate 3D charts. (Even draw 4- and 5-dimensional charts.) GC keeps animating the entire time. More importantly, you can click on equations and find the interesting values. Math is often hard. Graphing Calculator, because its so powerful and effortless, makes it easy to "just mess around" with equations, and in doing so, you really understand them. GC includes some amazing eye-candy -- a bunch of equations that plot a little PAC MAN head, chomping away. Thats nice, but the thing is, you can tweak the equations, control the values, and therefore understand how the whole thing works, and pretty soon youll be making your own silly eye-candy. No more math phobia. There are other programs for solving hard math problems. They are not only slower to solve equations, they take much more time to learn to use. It reminds me that once, long ago, programmers had to punch their programs onto special cards (better not make any mistakes!), and then take the piles of these cards to a special room. The next day, theyd get a printout, usually showing an error or two. Even simple programming required huge amounts of patience, and very few people even wanted to learn. Then Apple and others used the immense power of faster chips to make computers "effortless" -- and now even people who would rather not learn about FLASH RAM or WI FI can take a picture of a product, and within seconds, find out whether the price in the store really is a bargain. Graphing Calculator is like that, for Math. Nothing short of a revolution. It is a pity that Apple stopped including it with the operating system.

Ive been a big user of GC since the beginning back in OS 7 days, and Ron keeps making it better and better. The viewer allows me to email the complete workspace to someone that doesnt own GC and allows them to view it and even run the various interactive bits included in the workspace. Very cool! (and you should definitely consider getting the full version ... 4.0 adds tables (hooray!) and long variable names (three cheers!) among other useful bits. Ive even found the new numeric integration feature useful ... GC is turning into something beyond just a function visualizer ... its now a first class computing tool!) Cant recommend it high enough. And *get the full version*, you wont regret it. Now for the iPad version, Ron?

I was very excited to get this app because I am a high school student in Pre-Calc, unfortunatly after installing the app, it never opened.

Its like math, but fun!

i was really excited when i saw this app, but it never opened after instialtion :(

Same thing happened to me when I clicked on "Graphing Calculator Viewer", nothing pops up. But look up your top-most title bar. It says Graphing Calculator, File, Examples...etc. You can view examples and tutorials. Im guessing you cant create any since it is the free version app.

This app does not open!!! Dislike.

very good designed program,i am searching for it for a long time!!!

Its not really a calculator at all its just a set problem thats difficult to change, if you expect it to be like the kind of graphing calculator you use for school your wrong.

Entertaining, free, but equations are not editable This application is exactly what it says it is: A Viewer. You cannot edit the equations or create your own. If you want to do that, your Apple already has this program and it is called Grapher. Grapher is located in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Grapher also comes with many examples. The other option looks to be the "lite" version of this application, also available here in the App Store.

I have to disagree with the person who said Apple already has this program (as "Grapher"). Years ago I had the full version of this program (on a Mac OS 9, no less) and it is light-years beyond "Grapher". In the full version, not only do you not have to choose what coordinate system youre using in advance, like Grapher (instead you just type the equation and let the program figure it out), it can also shift easy from explicit to implicit variable relationships, handle simultaneous equations (even if not all on the same coordinate system), matrix multiplication, color mapping, fractals, 4D equations…and on and on. And it handles them FLUENTLY. Admittedly I havent played around with Grapher nearly as much as I did with the full version of Pacific Techs graphing calculator when I had it — but one major reason for that is the ease of use of Pacific Techs interface. I do agree with the previous poster on one point, though. The Graphing Calculator Viewer is more or less useless, *except* it does give you some idea of the capabilities of the full version. (You can also "cheat" and edit the example files directly as text, using TextEdit or similar. But thats very finicky; unlike entering in equations in the full version, the program wont fix missing parentheses, suggest symbols (e.g. suggest "theta" when you type "thet") and if you leave out one asterisk or parentheses in the text file, it wont open. But obviously the solution is to buy the full version.) The full version is five stars. Im thinking about getting it again — no idea what happened to the Mac OS 9 version I had 10 years ago. If I do, Ill write a review there.

Seeing as all you can do with this version is view graphs, it might as well just be a QuickLook Plugin at this point, although I doubt Apple allows standalone .qlplugins on the App Store. Still, though, this brings back nostalgia from my System 9 on my old G3 iMac, so that deserves a few stars.

This doesnt give you the option to graph your own equations.

Reading other reviews, clearly some people missed that this is the viewer. It is so people can share their equation documents with people who dont have the full Graphing Calculator. Its free. It works. It lets paid users of the full app share with people who havent yet discovered Graphing Calculator.

Cant input my own functions! Its just a tutorial/demo.

Dont waste your time downloading this app, it is just to view equations. Not a calculator, it is a stupid app. Dont waste your time!