TouchPlot-2.2

Hi,

I've read that some here asked about grapher applications for the iphone and ipod touch, and as the developer of one such application, I thought it would be adequate to tell about the present state of those in the AppStore.

AFAIK, there are at the moment two such applications on the store, and I am aware of at least a third one that might make it soon (I would guess for late august or early september) Both present apps are to be found under the Education category.

Historically, mine came first, and is named TouchPlot. Due to the small size of the screen, I had to make some compromise on the formula editor, making a choice that I know not everyone might like : formula entering uses direct polish notation. (Some reviewers obviously don't like it, and of course some do...)

That being said, version 2.2 just approved by Apple makes things much easier and I hope reviews will reflect it.

So there is, you should be aware of it, even with version 2.2, a learning curve for TouchPlot, and the first minutes spent with it could be a bit frustating (as might be the first minutes spent with a new calculator of which you're just too lazy to read the documentation...), but when you become more fluent with it, you get very powerful tools to study functions, iterative sequences, differential equations.

Much more information (screenshots, videos, tutorial...) is to be found on the application website :
http://www.mpkju.fr/~touchplot

Some nice screenshots of a (satisfied) french customer here :
http://forums.macgeneration.com/4768773-post104.html

The price for touchplot is 4.99USD, and I won't lower it. At the opposite, I do intend to raise it a bit in the following weeks.

The other grapher to be found in the appstore is named grafunc. Sold at 1.99USD, it is quite decent. The hints welcoming you at launch are very nice (I might copy the idea... except I would probably need hundreds of such hints...) The application is stable, and quite responsive.

That being said, the algorithm used to draw representative curves is very simple, not adaptive, so it won't give good results for ill-behaved functions. Examples of such functions are x->sin(1/x), x->sin(exp(x)) or x->1/x-floor(1/x). (Don't expect it to be better than your average graphing calculator in this respect, expect for the higher speed and screen resolution of course)

If you don't need the better accuracy of touchplot nor its extra-features, then grafunc is probably a good choice. (Well, you could buy both of course, they are not that expensive compared to the price of an ipod touch or your favorite graphing calculator...)

As for the other grapher that might come soon, I guess that in term of features, it will place itself somewhat between grafunc and touchplot.

phjo

 

Updates to come

TouchPlot actual version on the AppStore is now 2.3, which is mostly a bugfix release.

Soon to come, version 2.4 now in the reviewal process will add two new modes for function inspection, which a few customers asked for. A video demonstrates the new 2.4 features there

Next in line, and which will follow closely 2.4 is version 3.0, which will add equations, inequations, contourplots, gradient fields and 3d plotting of surfaces with equation z=F(x,y)... A video demonstrating TouchPlot 3.0 can be seen here.

phjo