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by mikeash 4870 days ago
It works even better if you do it while hanging upside down and while your spouse or significant other sacrifices a live chicken.

Seriously, it's a physical switch. There's no "calibration". "Recalibrate" a physical switch by doing some magic ritual in the Calculator app? If you believe that worked, I have some really high-quality HDMI and SATA cables you might be interested in purchasing, for very reasonable prices.
2 comments
scaphandre 4868 days ago
Ha - I agree that that procedure seems preposterous. I have seen it listed in several forums, and only considered it after several others had reported success. I figured it didn't cost much to empirically give it a go. I present weak evidence that it appears it may have helped for me.

For what its worth, I am doubtful. There did appear to be some subjective improvement in responsiveness, but I didn't benchmark it. It is not the Calculator app in itself that functions as this, I had originally read any stock Apple app would do it.

Software reset does fix this for some, so I don't think that some button state polling problem relating to software is inconceivable. Possible, but unlikely.

More info here - they acknowledge it is likely bs. http://lifehacker.com/5909709/recalibrate-your-idevice-home-...

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st3fan 4870 days ago
Here is a theory. Switches, specially push buttons, need debouncing in software. If a switch has problems then the characteristics of the debounce might change. Which could possibly be fixed by recalibrating.

(Not by holding a switch down of course, you would need to push and release the switch many times to see a debouncing change)

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mikeash 4870 days ago
Poor debouncing could conceivably cause a single push to register as two, or vice versa, but it's not going to cause a push to fail to register at all, which is part of every complaint I've heard so far.

I also see no reason that debouncing would require calibration. Basic debouncing just ignores any additional events that occur within a set period. That would just be set at the factory. There's a huge gulf between the timeframe of multiple events occurring due to switch mechanicals and the timeframe of legitimate ones.

Finally, the idea that somehow the Calculator app triggers a secret magic calibration step is just absurd. Even if you can somehow swallow the idea of software calibration of a simple mechanical switch, that detail makes it clear that this is nonsense.

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