Walking Randomly

I’m usually a big fan of Wolfram Research and their products but on reading the news that they had released a $50 iPhone app that hooked in to the Wolfram Alpha website I wondered if they had taken leave of their senses.  Let’s see why…

Wolfram Alpha is a web service that is based on the extremely powerful computer algebra system, Mathematica, and it is very VERY cool. I won’t go into detail about what it can do here since many,many people have done that before (including me) but for the uninitiated think of it as a super-powerful graphical calculator that (partially) understands plain English and also has access to massive datasets from areas as diverse as the stock market, chemistry, popular music, language and physics.

Many students I know focus on the fact that it can eat their math homework for breakfast – not only giving the answer but also giving all of the steps that you’d need to get full marks on your coursework. Mathematics educators in the know are scrambling to come up with ways to harness this new freely available computational power while those not in the know are wondering why their students all get straight As in their coursework and yet flunk their exams.

All in all it’s very good stuff and you may be forgiven for thinking that it’s worth $50 for an app that can do all that. I would agree with you except for one, tiny little detail.

You can get all of this stuff for free! From Wolfram themselves!

Don’t believe me? OK, let’s prove it. Mashable have just reviewed the shiny new Wolfram iPhone app and have given it a big thumbs up because the reviewer has focused on all of the awesome features that Wolfram Alpha has. Choose any one of those nice examples shown in the mashable review – any one you like. Now, fire up your favourite web browser, head over to the Wolfram Alpha website and type in the exact same query.

Tell you what. I’ll do it for you. One of the examples given for the $50 app solves a simple differential equation – click on this link (from your iPhone if it suits you) to see exactly the same results for free.

I did exactly this on my Android phone  and have included a screenshot for your delight and delectation (well, technically speaking I did it on the Android emulator since getting screenshots from an actual Android phone is tricky).  The Wolfram Alpha query below cost me nothing:

I would have had to pay $50 to get this next one using the new iPhone app.

So, let’s be very clear here, Wolfram aren’t selling you an app that puts the power of Wolfram Alpha in your iPhone – they are just selling you a browser alternative that can only hit one website! For $50.

Of course they don’t JUST give you a browser alternative – according to the comments section over at mashable, the new alternative to the ‘I am Rich‘ app also gives you a more math-friendly onscreen keyboard and a query-history as well as formatting the results a little nicer than the built in browser.

Maybe that’s worth $50 to you but if so then you have a lot more money than me.

Update 2nd June 2010: As pointed out in the comments, Wolfram have since reduced the price of the Wolfram Alpha app significantly.   At the time of writing it cost just £1.19 for iPhone and iPad versions of the software – now that’s more like it!