I had the opportunity to beta test the wonderful PCalc by James Thomson for these past few weeks and I’ve really come to love it, especially on the iPhone. You can read my short review about the iOS version here.

The two other new features that got me hooked are support for Handoff and PCalc’s widget. Handoff — one of iOS 8’s new features — means that I can start my calculations on my iPhone and should I choose to pick up my iPad, a little icon will appear on the lockscreen, allowing me to continue where I left off. I’ve actually had a few situations where this worked out perfectly. The only downside is that Handoff support in iOS 8 is still a little bit finicky — sometimes it just refuses to work.

I’ve also been using the OS X version and unfortunately, Handoff only worked correctly between iPad and iPhone – I just couldn’t coax anything useful out of it on OS X on either of my computers. James rolled out the update in the Mac App Store a few days ago and I just updated it a few minutes ago. At first it didn’t work at all with my iPhone 6 and iPad mini 2… and then I had the idea of turning on Bluetooth on both devices, to test it again (this did not work earlier during the betas). The PCalc icon appeared in the lower left hand corner of my lockscreen immediately. And it worked the other way too!

At this point in time I assume Bluetooth 4.0 is required for at least some Continuity features, but this is not made clear anywhere — Apple really should go into greater detail to explain their most promoted feature. And to think that so many people might not even know that they should turn it on and get frustrated… The funny thing is, I’m getting reports from various users that they are getting Handoff to work with Bluetooth turned off.

Go figure.

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PCalc with Handoff support is available in the Mac App Store.

★ PCalc for iOS — €8.99 / $9.99
★ PCalc Lite for iOS — free with IAP

★ PCalc for Mac — €8.99 / $9.99