Plus42 Pricing and documentation

[Paalar]

I've been reviving my interest in HP calculators. As many before me, I started out using slide rules, was forced to use log tables on exams (GCEs London) but was liberated once the HP25 replaced my Sinclair Scientific, the latter bought with left over lunch money. Believing I had caught up with the development in HP calculators, I started my revival with their latest HP Prime. Having worked with SW dev and UI design and reviewing stuff, I was shocked at the lack of a unified user experience, the half-baked solutions to difficult design choices (RPN only works sort of in some areas) and the re-introduction of HP Pascal - it used to be the language of the future, and it might well be for all I know. But it's not the language of now. Nobody asked for it, but there you are. And no RPL or keystroke programming. And buggy software. What had happened?? So I discovered the Plus 42. Almost bug free, and based on a solid foundation of UI experience. Priced the same as weird "scientific calculator apps" of which there are many.

Why this low price? The Prime cost me roughly €150 and doesn't really work. My other calculators have been similarly priced in 2023 currency, or more. Is a Plus42 worth less because it runs on my iPad or my Pixel with amazing processors and super fast performance? No. Quite the contrary. I would rather have a calculator on my phone than carrying yet another device. "Oh but exams for students!!" Who cares about students? In Norway where I now live (and throughout Europe) they now use online CAS and Python S/W in all schools and colleges. Calculators for students has gone the way of the Dodo. So there is a new maket, professionals who needs to solve problems and who have moved beyond Excel and don't want to carry Mathematica with them.

To set Plus42 apart it should cost €50 - 100 to reflect its quality. Unfortunately, that's the way of the world. Is a Porsche worth its current selling price? No. But the pricing defines the brand. There was a time when they were struggling, but then branding consultants came along and put the price where their quality aspirations were, and the rest is history. Thomas could take a page from their book...

And with that extra money, it should come with a PDF manual with the same typeface and layout as the original manual. The manual is Plus42s weakest link. So much functionality is not really documented to the same high standard as the original. And as a bonus, pay some YouTuber to produce a slick series of videos featuring the Plus42 and how it is useful for the executive of today, and tomorrow's inventors, engineers and Nobel laureates.

[Thomas Okken]

The price I chose to ask for Plus42 was basically just a guess. Charge too little and you'll make next to nothing, charge too much and you'll drive away many users.

How is it working out? Well, so far the number of Plus42 users on Android and iOS is about 1% of the number of Free42 users. That suggests that a very large fraction of people think even €10 is too expensive.

But of course there are other factors in play, that could change the picture. Like people who aren't interested in Free42 but who would like Plus42. And more generally, people who would like Plus42 but don't know it exists. The app is still selling so only time will tell how large the market turns out to be in the end.

By the way, I totally agree that the documentation is weak. Once I'm happy with the Plus42 core functionality – which should be soon, I'm planning to release 1.1 in December, which will include some nice functionality that got dropped from 1.0 because it was taking too long – I'll start rewriting the docs, piece by piece. Examples, diagrams, shorter sentences, the kind of stuff an editor would have made me do right away, if I had had one. And if I had had the time. :-)

[macak011]

It's been some time since Thomas answered me that he has no intention or plans to enter into the project of making a real calculator, nor SwissMicros, producer of DM42.

In particular, I'm of the opinion, and I think we share it, that the SwissMicros DM42 hardware can run the Plus42, it just has one less row of buttons. Maybe if the application could be adapted to be able to run on that hardware and then the price of the software would be significantly better (to buy and upload it on DM42), and enthusiasts like me would have the opportunity to use a real, metal Plus42 and/or DM42 (vice-versa), what do you think? Simply, for me it is much better to have real calculator instead of the phone in front of me when working...

I certainly ask Thomas to reconsider this idea.

Best regards and keep the good work, thank you once again for this remarkable app!

[crun]

I think it would be a mistake to make it cheaper.
WHAT $10 It's twice $5, why if it was $5 I'd say
WHAT!!! that's twice** $2
and so on. There is no such thing as cheap enough if I don't feel like paying.

**Well they are here because they need a calculator
As an aside, I can't get it as my phone doesn't use Play store.

As another aside, I am much happier to buy software when I can just get a no-questions asked refund. (no idea how Play store works these days)
And yet another is that you should have a Donate menu item on Free42.
Free42 should have a try and buy Plus42 menu item.

If you don't ask, you won't get.

My free software does track cumulative run time and number of starts. After a while I gently nag about donating, and I will do that once a year. You don't need to be a dick about it, but you should ask for donations in the app, especially from regular users, and make it easy to do.
I would ask regular users of Plus42 for a donation once a year to help ongoing development - they are the group most likely to keep supporting you because they paid once.

1% of users is pretty good I suspect. I was at .1% of users making a donation in an application with 5 million downloads

[Thomas Okken]

Of course Plus42 can work with the DM42 keyboard (*). I've said so myself, on numerous occasions, and I point it out every single time someone asks me about running Plus42 on the DM42. I honestly don't know how many more times I have to say it!

What I have also said, but apparently also have to keep repeating until kingdom come, is that I would love to see Plus42 run on the DM42. And that I am not going to do such a port myself, but would be open to collaborating with someone who knows their way around with development for the DM42.

/rant off

The reason I'm not going to do a Plus42 port to the DM42 myself should be obvious: it's going to be a lot of work. You can't simply take the DM42 patches for Free42 and apply them to Plus42. The internals have tons of differences, and the display logic in particular is very different. And Plus42 uses STL, which adds significant size to the executable. Will it still fit? I don't know. How useful will all the Plus42 extensions be in the limited RAM of the DM42? I don't know. What if there turn out to be weird crashes that are caused by quirks in the DM42 hardware or OS? I don't know.

The only way I would consider taking the lead on such a project would be if I could get paid for it, and that seems highly unlikely, or at least not an amount that would make it worth my while.

I think it makes much more sense for me to stick to what I actually know how to do, and enjoy doing.

(*) In fact, Plus42 can even work with the 37-key HP-42S layout. It can be used with all the Free42 skins in my collection, and you can get an idea how it could work on the DM42 by running it with the DM42 skin.

[Paul Dale]

After hearing about the lack of financial support for Plus42/Free42, I was somewhat discomforted. It's great software and definitely worth supporting. I hadn't done so previously because I wasn't aware of the lack of support. If I were, I'd have purchased the app immediately. This despite it not being my primary iOS calculator (that's the WP 34S unsurprisingly).

Currently I'm in a bind, I'd really like to support Thomas's amazing efforts but I lost my job recently and our household currently has no income. I cannot justify such an expense until I'm employed again. Once I get a new job, I will purchase the app ASAP.


Pauli
(the P in WP)

[jthole]

(11-07-2023 11:29 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  How is it working out? Well, so far the number of Plus42 users on Android and iOS is about 1% of the number of Free42 users. That suggests that a very large fraction of people think even €10 is too expensive.

I actually bought the Plus42 app, but use the Free42 app on my phone (because it works the same as the DM42 on my desk). I'm happy to donate the low amount of €10, and who knows I actually change over to the Plus42 app at some point.

[Thomas Okken]

Is the forum system acting up? My previous post was a reply to macak011, but his post was two weeks old by then, and I only noticed it yesterday. Now I see there was another post, by crun, which was made before my reply to macak011 but which I didn't see until just now.

(11-27-2023 09:31 AM)jthole Wrote:  I actually bought the Plus42 app, but use the Free42 app on my phone (because it works the same as the DM42 on my desk). I'm happy to donate the low amount of €10, and who knows I actually change over to the Plus42 app at some point.

Note that if you prefer the 37-key keyboard layout, you can use Plus42 with any Free42 skin, and if you prefer the 2-line display, you can change the number of rows with ROW- in the DISP menu.

All the Plus42 goodies like units and directories etc. are available regardless of the skin you use, you just have to access them through CATALOG if you're not using a skin designed for Plus42. The DIRS, DIR.FCN, UNITS, UNIT.FCN, EQN, and EQN.FCN functions on the second row of the Plus42 keyboard are basically just shortcuts to CATALOG→DIRS, CATALOG→DIR, CATALOG→UNITS, CATALOG→UNIT, SOLVER→[=], and CATALOG→EQNS.

[rprosperi]

(11-27-2023 10:49 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Is the forum system acting up? My previous post was a reply to macak011, but his post was two weeks old by then, and I only noticed it yesterday. Now I see there was another post, by crun, which was made before my reply to macak011 but which I didn't see until just now.
...

No, nothing wrong, crun simply just joined the Forum so his post was moderated and not visible to readers until approved.

[Hans S.]

(11-27-2023 09:31 AM)jthole Wrote:  I actually bought the Plus42 app, but use the Free42 app on my phone (because it works the same as the DM42 on my desk). I'm happy to donate the low amount of €10, and who knows I actually change over to the Plus42 app at some point.

One reason for lack of financial support could be that I, for example, had not heard of Plus 42 until now and through this thread (infrequent internet user). Three minutes later I have purchased a license.

Hans

[bxparks]

(11-07-2023 11:29 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Well, so far the number of Plus42 users on Android and iOS is about 1% of the number of Free42 users. That suggests that a very large fraction of people think even €10 is too expensive.

I paid for my Plus42 (even though I don't use it) and I donated to Free42 (because I use it all the time). Glad to know that I'm in the 1% of *something*. The 1% rate is sad to hear, but not surprising. There's probably tons of business school papers written about it, but I think people attach vastly different monetary values to software compared to something physical. People will gladly fork over $7-$10 for a cup of coffee, 300 times a year, but $10 for a piece of software that they use 300 times a year? No way!

In my case, I am reluctant to pay for software, because I got burnt several times in the past. I learned that when I buy software, I don't actually own it, I'm renting it. And it can be stolen from me on the whims of the author, or the app store. Several years ago I paid for a couple of Android apps for the 15C and the 12C. Then some time later, with no notifications, the apps got renamed or something, but my purchases were not carried over, so I lost them. I probably wouldn't have minded paying a few dollars again for the newly renamed 12C app, but the later versions seemed to get more aggressive about showing ads, and the UI progressively enshittified to a point that I hated it. Which I didn't think was possible because the look-and-feel of the 12C is written in stone, how can someone screw that up?

After experiencing this for a few more apps, I decided that I wasn't going to pay for apps anymore. They are all going to shove blinking animated ads down my throat anyway, whether I pay for it or not. I made exceptions for the Free42 and Plus42, because they are so good.

[bxparks]

(11-27-2023 05:07 PM)Hans S. Wrote:  One reason for lack of financial support could be that I, for example, had not heard of Plus 42 until now and through this thread (infrequent internet user). Three minutes later I have purchased a license.

That's true, it was only by obscure accident (which I cannot remember) that learned about Plus42. The "About" box in the Free42 does not mention it. [Update: I just noticed that my Android app v3.1 has a link to Plus42, but my Ubuntu desktop app v3.0.10 does not.] We have to actually click the link to https://thomasokken.com/free42/, which of course only about 10% of the people do.

Once we click through, there it is in a bright yellow box on the right side. Except... all my years of surfing on the user-hostile internet has trained my brain to completely ignore anything that is bright, yellow, and screaming for attention. So my conscious mind completely ignored that yellow box, until I explicitly searched for "Plus42" on that page, and suddenly it was right in my face.

[Thomas Okken]

(11-27-2023 05:33 PM)bxparks Wrote:  That's true, it was only by obscure accident (which I cannot remember) that learned about Plus42. The "About" box in the Free42 does not mention it. [Update: I just noticed that my Android app v3.1 has a link to Plus42, but my Ubuntu desktop app v3.0.10 does not.] We have to actually click the link to https://thomasokken.com/free42/, which of course only about 10% of the people do.

I added the Plus42 link in the About box in 3.0.11, which was the first release after Plus42 1.0 came out.

But, yes, visibility is a challenge. Every now and then there is a sales peak, probably caused by the app being mentioned on some forum somewhere. I did have a one-time pop-up ad for Plus42 in Free42, but it was only in one version, so someone skipping an update could easily have missed it.

But the best thing, I think, would simply be for the app to move up in the search results in the Android and iOS app stores. Free42 is one of the top hits when you search for "rpn" or "rpn calculator," and of course it would be nice if Plus42 were one of the top results as well. I think the app is creeping up in those search results, but progress is pretty slow. I don't know how an app's position in those results is determined, but if getting good ratings is a factor, I expect Plus42 to keep climbing. While sales have been slower than I hoped, I really can't complain about the ratings it's getting.

[Marco Polo]

(11-27-2023 05:12 PM)bxparks Wrote:  

(11-07-2023 11:29 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Well, so far the number of Plus42 users on Android and iOS is about 1% of the number of Free42 users. That suggests that a very large fraction of people think even €10 is too expensive.

I paid for my Plus42 (even though I don't use it)

Me too.
I generally prefer RPL, but Plus42 is an excellent calculator and, most important, is very well mantained.
I am playing with it since beta testing and, even if it is not yet capable to replace my 48/50g (and I am not sure it will ever be), I decided to pay for it due to its excellent quality and the real usability on smartphone, better than emu48 imho

[Johnh]

After reading this thread, I just 'ponied up' for Plus42. I really admire the dedication that went into creating it. If looks great on my S22 and I'm looking forward to exploring it.

[bxparks]

(11-27-2023 08:32 PM)Marco Polo Wrote:  I generally prefer RPL, but Plus42 is an excellent calculator and, most important, is very well mantained.
I am playing with it since beta testing and, even if it is not yet capable to replace my 48/50g (and I am not sure it will ever be)

Side question: How does someone learn RPL in 2023? My last full-time calculator was the HP-42S around 1996. I left the calculator world behind until about 6 months ago. I keep reading about how great RPL is, but as far as I can tell, no HP calculator currently in production uses RPL. The HP Prime seems to have its own language. The 50G gets great reviews, but is no longer in production, and seems fairly rare and expensive on eBay, in the $120 to $175 range.

Then there is the matter of complexity. The Programming in System RPL, 2nd Ed reference guide is 638 pages long. It has this passage in the introduction: "The entry database is a list of about 7000 SystemRPL and ML entry points which can be used to program the HP calculators 38G, 39G, 48G, and 49G". That is astounding to me. I will never be able keep even a small fraction of 7000 functions/entry-points in my head. RPN has the problem that it is slightly different for every calculator, like the Free42 and Plus42 versions, but each is simple enough to learn in a reasonable time. RPL seems like a monster.

[Thomas Okken]

(11-27-2023 09:34 PM)Johnh Wrote:  After reading this thread, I just 'ponied up' for Plus42. I really admire the dedication that went into creating it. If looks great on my S22 and I'm looking forward to exploring it.

Thank you! And also, my thanks to everyone else on this thread expressing their support. :-)

(11-27-2023 10:20 PM)bxparks Wrote:  Side question: How does someone learn RPL in 2023? My last full-time calculator was the HP-42S around 1996. I left the calculator world behind until about 6 months ago. I keep reading about how great RPL is, but as far as I can tell, no HP calculator currently in production uses RPL. The HP Prime seems to have its own language. The 50G gets great reviews, but is no longer in production, and seems fairly rare and expensive on eBay, in the $120 to $175 range.

Then there is the matter of complexity. The Programming in System RPL, 2nd Ed reference guide is 638 pages long. It has this passage in the introduction: "The entry database is a list of about 7000 SystemRPL and ML entry points which can be used to program the HP calculators 38G, 39G, 48G, and 49G". That is astounding to me. I will never be able keep even a small fraction of 7000 functions/entry-points in my head. RPN has the problem that it is slightly different for every calculator, like the Free42 and Plus42 versions, but each is simple enough to learn in a reasonable time. RPL seems like a monster.

I'm probably not the best person to answer that question, since there are many people who are waaaay more knowledgeable than I am about RPL on this forum. With that in mind:

I have a soft spot for the HP-48G. My first RPL calculator was the HP-28S, when it was new, followed by the 48G a few years later, and finally a 50g just a few years ago. As far as I'm concerned, the 48G hits the sweet spot, I find it easy to find my way around on. I've never been interested in SystemRPL and ML, I just like RPL for being compact and good for recursive algorithms. If you're just interested in testing the waters, this is the machine I would recommend (or an emulator). Just start with plain RPL and then decide whether you want to really get in deeper. Note that the basic RPL language is very simple and easy to learn, and the voluminous documentation mostly covers the huge number of built-in functions. With the HP-48G, I was up to speed within a couple of days.

[johnb]

I, too, hadn't even heard of Plus42 until 2-4 weeks ago or so. And immediately bought it. It's now the calculator on my phone's main screen. (Well, I do have WP-34s, a 48g, and a 16c on other pages, LOL.)

Also, I think you should be charging $20.

At least for me, $20 is the sweet spot for this type of expenditure: it's the maximum amount of money that I will spend without talking to my wife about it, and without taking much time at all to ponder.

[Steve Simpkin]

(11-27-2023 10:20 PM)bxparks Wrote:  

(11-27-2023 08:32 PM)Marco Polo Wrote:  I generally prefer RPL, but Plus42 is an excellent calculator and, most important, is very well mantained.
I am playing with it since beta testing and, even if it is not yet capable to replace my 48/50g (and I am not sure it will ever be)

Side question: How does someone learn RPL in 2023? My last full-time calculator was the HP-42S around 1996. I left the calculator world behind until about 6 months ago. I keep reading about how great RPL is, but as far as I can tell, no HP calculator currently in production uses RPL. The HP Prime seems to have its own language. The 50G gets great reviews, but is no longer in production, and seems fairly rare and expensive on eBay, in the $120 to $175 range.

Then there is the matter of complexity. The Programming in System RPL, 2nd Ed reference guide is 638 pages long. It has this passage in the introduction: "The entry database is a list of about 7000 SystemRPL and ML entry points which can be used to program the HP calculators 38G, 39G, 48G, and 49G". That is astounding to me. I will never be able keep even a small fraction of 7000 functions/entry-points in my head. RPN has the problem that it is slightly different for every calculator, like the Free42 and Plus42 versions, but each is simple enough to learn in a reasonable time. RPL seems like a monster.

Since you were familiar with the HP-42S, I would recommend looking at the book, HP 41/HP 48 Transitions by William C. Wickes. William C. Wickes was the project manager for the HP-28 and HP-48 calculator projects and is very good at explaining how RPL works and the reasoning behind the evolution of RPN to RPL.

A PDF of this book is available here:
https://literature.hpcalc.org/community/...itions.pdf

[rprosperi]

(11-28-2023 12:35 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  Since you were familiar with the HP-42S, I would recommend looking at the book, HP 41/HP 48 Transitions by William C. Wickes. William C. Wickes was the project manager for the HP-28 and HP-48 calculator projects and is very good at explaining how RPL works and the reasoning behind the evolution of RPN to RPL.

A PDF of this book is available here:
https://literature.hpcalc.org/community/...itions.pdf

The book Steve recommends is indeed excellent, and coming from a 42S background should be quite comfortable. Assuming so, you should take a look at this book, also written by Bill Wickes; in my opinion, far and away the best book to learn RPL. If, after following this book for a few chapters, you aren't quite intrigued and wanting to know more, then bail-out, bail-out, bail-out; you won't enjoy using it.

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1570

RPL is very polarizing; nearly everyone I've known in the HP calculator community is either drawn into RPL and never looks back, or strongly prefers RPN; very few are middle of the road and/or go back and forth.