# Fractally — user reviews > 17 indexed App Store user reviews of Fractally by Craig McPheeters, rated 4.10/5 from 17 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fractally/id1534380451/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fractally/id1534380451.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 11 · 4★ 2 · 3★ 1 · 2★ 1 · 1★ 2 ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — loads. does nothing. *2023-09-02* nothing you click on does anything. Not sure that this app actually works. Deleted. **Developer response:** I just noticed this review, 7 months late, oops, sorry for the delay. The app does work, but I noticed a problem that happened when I first ran the app and the view was completely zoomed out, where the menus and buttons were unresponsive. Then I zoomed in (via the pinch gesture) and everything works again. Now I can't reproduce the issue no matter what I do. Strange. I have no idea why the app froze like that - but if you can zoom in (via pinch, scroll wheel, etc) then the app should "unlock". Also, this issue seems to not affect very many people, as many others are downloading the app and using it. If you are curious about the Mandelbrot set, Julia set or the Mandelbrot orbit shapes, the app is definitely worth a spin. Try again. Also, I can be contacted at fractally@luckgrib.com, that is a better route to resolve an issue than an app store comment, if you are interested in resolving the issue. ### 1/5 — Inutile *2023-01-17* Je n'ai pas réussi à reproduire les figures en démonstration. L'ergonomie est incompréhensible. L'app est inutilisable ! **Developer response:** Considérez l'application comme un jeu. Toutes les images peuvent être reproduites. Passez un peu de temps avec et vous le découvrirez. ### 3/5 — Updates when? *2025-06-05* Read the title. ### 3/5 — Desperately needs color cycling *2021-06-08* C'mon man, that's been around for 30 years with this stuff. Decent program that needs clearer navigation. At least on Mac. ### 4/5 — Missing a lot of stuff… *2024-09-02* I haven’t used this app for a long time and have instead been using RetinaMandelbrot. Fractally has a lot of stuff missing. First of all, infinite zooming. That is one of the reasons I use RetinaMandelbrot instead. I just love the insane complexity of deep zooms, and I just can’t do that in your app (PS: RetinaMandelbrot also kinda has that same issue, but instead the fractal completely goes black, and weird colored (I guess lag) blocks appear that don’t match the iterations, but all of that happens at about 5.7 x 10 to the power of 85 zoom. Not when you’ve barely even zoomed in. Secondly, infinite iterations. This kind of goes with the infinite zooming thing. You could keep it the same as you currently have the iteration editor. Just don’t have a limit. Or you could make it so it adds more iterations as you zoom in (that is how RetinaMandelbrot handles it’s iterations btw). Finally, custom color palletes. Some of the set palletes you currently have, I don’t like. Plz add custom colors. Or at least let people edit how the iterations look. Like only having the lines for the iterations and not filled in. Plz add these features. It will really improve the app. **Developer response:** Thanks for the feedback. 👍 ### 4/5 — Pretty neat but… *2024-05-03* I can’t zoom in infinitely as it makes me nor able to zoom in after a few zooms **Developer response:** Yes, the zoom's are limited - to 10,000,000,000,000 x. At the point the zoom's stop, the app has reached the limit of the double precision floating point (IEEE double) precision. Double precision floating point uses 52 bits for its mantessa, 11 bits for the exponent, and a sign bit making 64 (FP64.) To zoom further we need arbitrary precision floating point, and I've experimented with this, but its horribly slow. The hardware handles FP64 and things like multiply and add take one cycle. With arbitrary precision, this goes up to many dozens of cycles per multiply. The app would be sluggish beyond reason - and your review would be complaining about how slow the app is, instead of how its zooms are limited haha. I've favored speed and interactivity in the app over infinite zooms. Trust me, this is the better tradeoff. ### 4/5 — Good, not great *2021-02-18* The zoom and pan controls to find interesting areas to explore are great. Resolution is outstanding. Seeing the interation between sets is facinating. Only wish that there was more contol over the color pallet ### 4/5 — Very good for a free app *2020-11-08* My 8 year old has now explored for hours, full of excitement. Overall greaet to play with. Pros - very fast, good use of graphics card it seems - nice split screen option with Julia set - simple but elegant interface, including simple colour option cycling Cons - Max iterations at 2k, but takes you to 1e10 zoom nicely - Zoom of pan and scroll using bottom bar is visually smooth though I found it a bit clunky ### 5/5 — Mandelbrot + Julia *2026-02-21* Very interesting to view both together! **Developer response:** Thanks! ### 5/5 — Exactly what it says! *2025-10-18* This app is exactly what it says. Just straight to the point with no ads. We need more games like this. I might even donate! If a mobile game is really good with no ads, small amounts of people might donate to keep it like that. Great! ## Most praised reviews (7 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Very nice *2025-07-23* Really good performance all things considered, how did you get this to run so well?. Rendering of both Mandelbrot and Julia sets simultaneously is impressive. Colourmaps are excellent and scaled nicely. Are you using single precision for these? Perturbation to go deeper maybe? **Developer response:** Thanks! The performance is simply a result of using the device hardware efficiently - that's how fast our devices are now, it's kind of astounding really. As for the precision, the app changes from single to double precision as you zoom in. If you have the app show its metrics, there is a little "(s)" or "(d)" there which indicates single or double, which will change as you zoom. Lastly, if the app goes much deeper into the fractals you start to see the precision being an issue as the fractal starts to tear apart. To go a lot deeper I would need to implement quad precision, or an arbitrary precision fixed point... That "exercise left to the reader" for now :-) ### 5/5 — Great Fractal Explorer App *2025-04-21* Downloaded this app just for fun and was amazed, how fast this app is. On my MacMini M4 Pro I can easily run the app at full screen and 2048 iterations without any visible delay. The generated images look amazing. **Developer response:** Thanks! Part of the fun I had in developing this app, and working "close to the hardware" in order to make it as quick as possible was realizing just how fast our devices have become over the years. I've been working as a software developer for a long, long time (I first started using punch cards and paper tape as a way to store my programs!) Our modern computers are amazing devices. I also have a MacMini M4 Pro (48Gb), and it's just impossibly fast, I'm constantly being amazed by it. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the app! Thanks for the feedback. ### 5/5 — This Game Is Gas *2024-07-28* Thank you for this wonderful game, keep cooping up more From Fimble Gimble **Developer response:** Thanks! ### 5/5 — Takes me back to playing with 'Dragon' on Silicon Graphics workstations in the 90s *2023-04-28* What fun - zooming into the edge of the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets updating almost instantaneously - nice set of colour palettes - trip down memory lane but with breakneck speed - what's not to like! **Developer response:** I was also around in the 90's using SGI workstations and "reality engine"s, watching graphics come alive. Good times. Our computers, and phones(!) are so much more powerful today. It's hard to comprehend how fast they are. Thanks for your review! ### 5/5 — Fractal nerds rejoice *2021-07-05* This is a Great! fractal app. I highly recommend it & I have spent many hours using a variety of such applications. Enjoy :-) **Developer response:** Thank you! ### 5/5 — Ismaël B *2021-06-28* Il y a une limite de zoom et iteration. Pouvez-vous faire des mises à jour de ça **Developer response:** Merci! La limite d'itération est actuellement de 2048 et la limite de zoom est limitée par la précision fournie par une valeur à virgule flottante double précision. Augmenter la limite de zoom serait assez compliqué et représenterait un projet majeur et beaucoup de travail. La limite de zoom actuelle est d'environ 1 000 000 000 000. Augmenter la limite d'itération est quelque chose que je ferai dans la prochaine mise à jour. (Au fait, vous pouvez trouver l'éditeur d'itération dans le menu, accessible depuis le bouton haut/gauche.) ### 5/5 — Simple, intuitive and nice ;) *2020-12-27* As always, Craig’s app is a pleasant and easy to use. I’ve just spent 10min zooming and panning into fractals.... Thanks ;) **Developer response:** :-) --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-25.*