Apple iPhone calculator error

According to iPhone’s calculator: 3600 * 4.333333333 = 156

Even weirder, once you get 156, try: 156 - 3 and you get 15597.

Someone’s display algorithm isn’t correct. Can I trust this calculator for anything now?

Added Wednesday 10/31: I found there are problems with the OS X calculator, too.

Comments

[george]

You are so picky, as if this calculation actually meant anything to anyone.

[Carl]

Very interesting.

The Calculator app is surprisingly fragile on the iPhone. You can crash it by simply typing a decimal point, followed by 10 zeroes. I'm sure it will get some bug fixes in the next round -- it's not exactly a mission critical iPhone app, just a handy one. And there's always Google. ;-)

Carl

[Polonus]

Just to confirm - there is the same display bug in the iPod Touch. The key to repeat the bug is to have 600, 1600, 2600 or 3600 (and probably some more values) multiplied by a single digit with .333333333 or .222222222 (as much as you can type in). Weird.

[Hans]

@ george: it is important to me as I was calculating my fees for a job and the result seemed a tad on the low end ;)

[Tom]

The bug doesn't happen is you're not 'anal' and try to type the repeating decimals to max it out. Factoring a tip or ever your wages with 3600 * 4.33333 is good enough and works fine.

Should it be fixed? - Yup. News? (worthy of asensationalitic headline) - Nope.

[PFFXV]

What do you want? Beauty or accuracy? If you wanted accuracy, you would not have purchased a first generation Apple product.

But at least it was beautiful in its error.

[Heart_Man]

My iPhone calculates 3600 * 4.33333333 = 15599.999999
and 156 - 3 = 153

[Hans]

@ Heart_Man: you only see the error if you put nine 3's.

[Scott]

Someone should check and see if this calcuation computes: 1.1.1=0 (why? Because this version of the iPhone software isn't worth anything).

[Eelko]

A similar issue exists in MS Excell, the numbers are different but result was the same (displays wrong number but calculates correctly).

I think it took MS yeasr (!) to solve, let's see how fast Apple picks this up.

[Technographer]

Typos in the comments on this thread make me giggle.

[divorce guy]

well try this 5200-2600=
what a crap!

[Hans]

@ divorce guy: seems to work properly for me. What result to you get?

[madsonic]

I got 400/20 = 1 :)

[Santiago]

Well, all those little errors seems to be only display error.
Witch is already serious I agree.
But listen to these huge mistakes:
sin(pi) = 0.054803...
cos(pi) = 0.998497...

[Santiago]

Ooops, I made a mistake!
The sinus and cosinus is not false.
I just have my iPhone for 2h and I forgot to switch from deg to rad.