How I Found A Bug In iPhone Software 2.0
July 16, 2008 | 16:00And then realized that I’m just an idiot. When calculating the cube root of a number you’d use a scientific calculator or a non-scientific calculator with a little trick.
Given that the new iPhone/iPod touch software features a scientific calculator I tried some functions like the x-th root of y. When you caluclate the cube of 3 we get 27, so the cube root of 27 is 3. And every time I’ve had hit the 3 after entering 27 “n-th root button” 3 I ended up with 1.4422495. Which is the cube root of 3. Then I tried it with the cube roots of 64 and 125 which resulted in 4 and respectively 5. Then again cube root of 27, and again 1.4422495. I did it. I found a bug. So I tried to call up Greuff and Wogri, who didn’t pick up their phones. And then I tried it again. 27 “n-th root button” 3. And then the calculator showed me a result of 3.
What has happened here? Lucky me did hit the “n-th root button” twice every time I tried before. So no bug to file, just my crippled fingers and me thinking that I’m a genius.
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Here is a real calculator bug that I have submitted
Marc | September 18, 2008 | 20:53Here is a real calculator bug that I have submitted to Apple via their feedback form:
Flip to the scientific (landscape) mode and enter
100 [displays 100]
+/- [displays -100]
e^x [displays 3.72...e-44 which is correct]
1/x [displays 268,811.714... which is off by a factor of 1e39]
Here’s a probably related bug where there is a loss of precision:
1 EE 32 +/- = [displays 1e-32 the '=' is necessary to work around another bug. if you skip the '=' you will see another bug]
1/x [displays 1.111...e+32]
I tried to reproduce the same bugs on my iPod
maze | September 18, 2008 | 21:00I tried to reproduce the same bugs on my iPod touch and you’re right. When using the calc that comes with MacOS X i get 2,688117141816134e+43 for the first equation, the iPod shows me 268811,714… which is in fact off by 1e39.
I can also confirm the second bug. So whatever you do, planning a skyscraper or a nuclear bomb, do not use the iPod touch / iPhone for calculations!