Since O’Neill’s post mentions Calca, I thought I should talk a little bit about the latest nerd calculating tool. [Calca bills itself as a: “Humane Symbolic Calculator”][1]. While I have no clue what that means, it’s very catchy. I downloaded the Mac version and have very mixed feelings about the app.
I have no doubt that for some people, this app will just click, but I think *most* people are still better off with [Soulver][2].
But don’t mistake that for me saying that Soulver *is* better than Calca — they are actually much further apart that I would have guessed.
Soulver acts like calculator mixed with Excel, whereas Calca acts like a text-file version of Excel. Neither is bad, just very, *very*, different. Soulver is what I grab when I need to do math, Calca is a tool to grab when I want to create a dynamic reference — something with perhaps more permanence.
Since that was overly vague, here’s the only thing I have found Calca useful for so far: lease rates. I always have to tell people how much Space 2 at Building Q will cost monthly, and that’s rather dynamic. Usually I have to calculate it each time, but with Calca I can set all the variables up and run the calculations. Thus I can update the price of every space by changing one variable — that’s pretty damned handy. And because it is *just* a text file, the information won’t be trapped.
[Calca is `$4.99`][3] on the Mac App Store and is niche, but very neat.
[1]: http://Calca.io/
[2]: https://brooksreview.net/2012/09/soulver-buy-it/
[3]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/calca/id635758264?ls=1&mt=12