Numerical: The Calculator Without Equal

Developer, Designer (2014 iOS App)

In 2014 I started teaching myself to make iOS apps in Objective C. After reading a few books and working through some basic tutorials I had this silly little idea to make a calculator without an equals button. This presented some interesting challenges related to order of operations, responsiveness and feedback, and something about a “calculator app with no equal(s)” made me laugh. After working with a talented designer Alex Vanderzon to design the look and feel we released 1.0 to the App Store. I also made this launch video which was shared on a few design blogs and helped us get some publicity.

At this same time I was hosting a somewhat successful podcast called The Menu Bar where we interviewed various Tech and Design Bloggers / Podcasts. These writers were therefore, coincidentally, aware of my fledgling attempts to learn to program. I sent many of them beta access codes to get feedback and many of them kindly reviewed / featured the app on launch day. This was an unexpected boon and led to this app being a surprise hit! It was featured on dozens of tech blogs, the design was praised, and it went on to be downloaded 500,000+ times over its lifetime!

This kickstarted my developer career as I used this to begin freelancing. A few years later I updated it to v2.0 and still keep it somewhat updated, albeit it’s been less of a priority the less few years.

I learnt many lessons from this project, not least of which is, follow your curiosity. I never would have guessed this little programming side hobby would become the focal point of my life and am forever grateful to the friends and tech community that supported me in this time.

Numerical 1 is no longer available but you can download Numerical 2 in the App Store for free!

Software and Tools:

• Objective C

• Xcode

• Photoshop

• After FX

• Final Cut Pro