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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the "Math Notes" example. Why does this need AI? Isn't this just Calca[1] but with extra steps?

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calca/id635757879

Cala with less steps, technically. No extra apps or text syntax to learn. Just drawing the math you learned in school as if on paper

The extra steps are the (probably at least) 10x compute this requires to do the same thing.

The "Math Notes" thing is absolutely infuriating to me. I use TextEdit on macOS for various notes and the forced math autocomplete (with no way to turn it off) has pushed me away from TextEdit entirely.

Do you mean Notes? TextEdit doesn't support this functionality at all.

I mean TextEdit. It definitely supports this to some degree, at least. Try typing “4 * 2 =” on a new line.

Heck even Safari on my phone autofilled “8” when typing this comment.

Ah - you can turn this off with keyboard - text input - input sources - edit - show inline predictive text

Sweet mercy I don't know how I didn't find that or how to thank you enough!

Wait actually that doesn't work. TextEdit still autocompletes the friggin' math.

This smelled like one of those things where they've applied a certain behavior to an entire class of widget for consistency's sake, and TextEdit just happens to use that widget. If so, it'd be controlled at the system settings level.

Sure enough: System Settings -> Keyboard -> (under the "text input" area) Edit... (button next to your primary keyboard language) -> toggle "Show Inline Predictive Text"

If you want to easily switch between having it and not, I bet you can set a second keyboard with the same language but a different setting there and use the quick keyboard switcher widget/shortcuts (I did not try this, though). Or there's probably a way to shortcut it with AppleScript or some other automation thingy with ten minutes of effort (mostly googling).

But that still doesn't disable it. I can type in "cos(23 deg) =" and it will autocomplete it, even though I have "Show inline predictive text" disabled. I can post a screencast if anyone would like.

Weird, I tried "1+1=" before and after and it disabled it for me.

[EDIT] A quirk: I do have to hit "done" on the window before it seems to apply the change, toggling doesn't do it until I hit "done" (I just tried again to double-check and noticed this)

[EDIT 2] Nb I don't not-believe you, we could be on different OS versions (I'm on 15.1) or something else could be causing the difference.

I'm on macOS 15.2.

Currently it's not autocompleting some simple algebra. But if I enter more "complex" equations ("3 / 4 =", "3 * 5 - 2 - 1 =", "tan(pi) =", etc.) then it autocompletes those. I can't figure out why it's inconsistent. And I've definitely checked and confirmed "Show inline predictive text" is disabled and I've rebooted to try and give everything a fresh start.

One thing I've noticed is that if I enter the same equation multiple times it might stop suggesting for that specific equation, so I suggest trying multiple different equations.

Oh god, that's deeply weird.

I've felt for some time they're overdue for an "almost nothing but bug fixes and performance improvements" major release like we got a couple times in the 20-teens :-/

Forced AI garbage seems to be Notes team's SOP at this point. They destroyed the handwriting experience on iPads, in iOS 18, with an incompetent spellchecker that can't be turned off. At least this math thing is somewhat unobtrusive, the spellchecker straight-up destroys notes. No acknowledgement of radars and no fix in sight, as expected of Apple I suppose.

Anecdotally even palm rejection seems to have gone to absolute shit in Notes with iOS 18. When I go to write now there’s like a 50% chance the scroll position flies up the document.

I also tried their “handwriting improvement” feature that claims to clean up lines a bit while still looking like your own writing. All it did was turn legible writing into total gibberish.

Calca is text entry not drawn

Math notes also works with text entry.

Indeed, but that's obviously not the impressive part. Wolfram alpha demonstrated the text-entry version a decade ago...

Was going to say the same thing. Wolfram Alpha has been doing MathNotes for 16 years now. I seriously doubt AppInt will ever come close to the depth that Wolfram has.

Also seen in Soulver.

Soulver is text entry not drawn

But this still doesn't need AI, unless we're calling OCR "AI" now

How else do you get the O and 0's correct? Building a handwriting recognizer is one of the first things you learn to do in AI-writing class.

Assume words don't contain numbers and numbers don't contain words, then provide a convenient UI for selecting alternatives?

For fielded input matching known patterns, recognition can also be constrained by pattern matching and general validation rules (e.g., VINs are 17 characters long, cannot contain the letters I, O, or Q, and, given prior information in other fields, can be further constrained by manufacturer code, model year, and by requiring a correct check digit).

Show us any prior OCR that can read hand drawn formulas beyond the most basic single line expressions

I don't recall the name of the app, but drawing formulas, equations etc with a finger was a thing on Android like 10 years ago. And it did things like a mix of fractions and square roots etc just fine.

If by "AI", you mean "neural network", rather than "program/machine", then still : hasn't OCR already been using neural networks for many decades ??

Why does this need AI? Isn't this just dividing by two, which you can easily do in your head?

(I get that not everybody bothers doing vaguely complex mental arithmetic, but dividing by two? Come on!)

The point is algebra system, it’s quite good for unit conversion, budgeting, etc - lots of things a spreadsheet does great but seems a bit overkill for. Algebra big improvement over basic arithmetic calculator power.

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