Calca by Krueger Systems is not your everyday calculator app. It is really powerful and text based. Now I know you’re thinking of Soulver but Calca takes that vision and goes so much further. Frank Krueger wrote about why he spent a few months to make this app a reality here.
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The first thing you will notice about Calca is the elegant almost iA Writer-esque interface. In fact it has full Markdown support as well. Calca has a very clean look. Colours are only used for syntax highlighting. On launch you can set your location for storing documents. Calca has full iCloud sync and it works perfectly. The app comes preloaded with an introduction and a few example files. Spending some time with these will prove infinitely useful in the long run because there’s almost nothing the app cannot do. The realtime results for calculations that are usually seen in spreadsheets are great. After you’re done with your calculation you can make a change to any variable and instantly see it reflect everywhere else. The documents view also allows you to switch storage locations and restore the preloaded documentation if needed. Working within a document is really easy with the enhanced keyboard. The function autocomplete is amazing. Another feature I really love is the ability to get inline results from Google from within a document. I typed ‘USD to INR’ followed by ‘=?’ and Calca fetches the conversion and appends calculation with a ‘#googled’ so you know where that result came from. Since all the files in Calca are plain text you can share them via email easily keeping everything intact. Navigation between your files is done by tapping the left or right arrows. Calca uses the page turning effect I love while navigating between documents. Examples of what you can do in Calca are available here and you should check that out because there is too much to mention here.
Calca is one of those apps that really makes you wonder how far we have come since the first calculator app hit the App Store. It is a modern calculator app for professionals. Sync is perfect across your iOS devices and Mac. It has fully replaced Soulver for me. Calca is available on the App Store as a universal app for $2.99 and on the Mac App Store for $4.99. I cannot emphasize how cheap the app is given its abilities. Do yourself a favour and pick both apps up.