Comparison

Pic2Mag vs Epicycles

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Pic2Mag

Visualize magnetic and electric fields by drawing magnets or charges. This educational tool helps students understand physics concepts by displaying field lines and voltage potentials. It offers a free, ad-free learning experience for iOS devices.

Highlights
  • Draw magnets to visualize magnetic fields
  • Draw charges to visualize electric fields
  • Magnetostatic and Electrostatic modes
  • Field line and voltage potential plotting
  • Caches results for faster processing
  • Ad-free learning experience
Features
Read full description

The user draws the magnets and the Pic2Mag program draws the magnetic fields. The Field Calculator program now has a Magnetostatic mode, and an Electrostatic mode to plot either magnetic fields or electric fields. The program designed to help students learn Magnetic fields and Electric fields. You can draw magnets and look at the magnetic field, or you can draw electric charges and look at the electric voltage field. The best free magnetic science program you can download! No advertisements, it's just all app. The app can process most images in just a few minutes. The app caches it's results so the more that you use it, the faster the program processes images. Red pixels represent magnets with a North pole surface facing the observer, and Blue pixels represent magnets with a South pole surface facing the observer. Pink pixels represent positive electric charges, and Dark Purple pixels represent negative electric charges

About

Epicycles

Explore the visualization of complex Fourier series through interactive epicycles. Create and analyze approximations of parametric curves and complex functions. Save animations and export custom terms for later use.

Highlights
  • Visualize Fourier series of 2D functions
  • Create epicycles from drawn curves
  • Save custom terms to documents
  • Export animations as GIFs
  • Adjust time and number of terms
  • Interactive graphic elements
Features
Read full description

The Epicycles app is a tool for exploring the visualization of complex Fourier series. It allows users to interactively create and visualize epicycles based on sampled parametric curves or predefined Fourier series terms. The app provides a visual representation of the complex Fourier series and demonstrates the approximation of complex-valued functions using epicycles. It can be used to study the properties of Fourier series, understand the concept of epicycles, and explore the visualization of complex functions in a fun and interactive way. • Visualizes Fourier series of 2D functions parameterized by time that are built-in, your own drawn 2D curves, or custom frequency components using the terms editor. • Custom terms can saved by exporting them to 'epi' documents in Files, and then later restored by importing them. • Cyclic animations can be saved to GIFs or snapshots saved to PNGs in the Photos library, with sizes 480x480, 720x720 or 1080x1080. • The main view consists of several functional items: Graphic Menu, Time Slider (t), Number of Fourier series terms slider (N), Current Function Menu. Graphic Menu: In the main view use the menubar in the graphic view to select options to hide or show the following graphic elements of the Fourier series visualization: • Circle: The blue circles that are the paths traced by the epicycles. These illustrate Euler’s formula for the complex valued terms of the Fourier series, expressing each complex exponential term as a pair (r cos(n t), r sin(n t)) that trace a circle of radius r, n times as time t varies in the period of length 2π. • Eye: The green circle that represents the value of the Fourier series at the current time. • Lightning: The red line segment path that consists of the joined radii of the epicycles circles, from the origin to the value of the Fourier series at the current time. • Pencil: The orange path that traces the current 2D function. • Star: The black path that traces the Fourier series 2D approximation of the current 2D function. Additionally in the menubar: • Magnify: Hide some views to make room for the expanded display the graphic. • Share: Save the graphic as an animated GIF or snapshot PNG in Photos library. • Play: Animate the graphic by periodically advancing the current time. • Info: Display internet resources conveniently in the app about Fourier series, epicycles and Euler’s formula. Time Slider (t): Adjust the time slider to see the state of all the graphic elements at any time within the time period [-π,π] on which the current 2D function is defined. Number of Fourier series terms slider (N): Adjust the number of terms included in the Fourier series approximation to the current 2D function. Frequency components in a partial Fourier series range from -N to N. The maximum value is limited to 100. As a guide tap the wand icon to set the number of terms to a value whose corresponding highest frequency can theoretically be reproduced with the given number of samples, based on the concept of Nyquist frequency with uniform sampling. For the built-in sample functions that sample count is fixed. The number of samples of your own drawn curve is variable, and displayed in the drawing view. The custom Fourier series using the term editor has known frequency components, limited to the range -20 to 20. The number of samples generated is sufficient for any selection in that range. Therefore in this case the wand sets N to the highest absolute frequency value of the terms. Current Function Menu: Use the segmented control to select from a variety of built-in 2D parametric curves or select the `?` item. Then you can either draw a 2D curve in the Draw tab view, or edit custom Fourier series terms in the Term tab view. In the latter case the app will numerically generate the Fourier series of a Fourier series, by sampling the summation of the series terms.

Screenshots

Pic2Mag4 screens
Epicycles4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Epicycles at every 5 days against Pic2Mag's every 31 months. Pic2Mag's advantage is iOS requirement (8.0 vs 15.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Pic2Mag against 5.0 for Epicycles. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pic2Mag ships an update every 31 months, Epicycles every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and September 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Pic2Mag versus Epicycles: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPic2MagEpicycles
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings)
Number of ratings12 — better
Update frequencyEvery 31 monthsEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS8.0 — better15.0
Further details — not scored
Size108 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMichael SnyderLimit Point Software

Customer experience

Pic2Mag

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Epicycles

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Pic2Mag

No in-app purchases

None

Epicycles

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Pic2Mag free?
Pic2Mag is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Epicycles free?
Epicycles is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Pic2Mag or Epicycles?
Pic2Mag and Epicycles are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 1 and 2 ratings respectively.
Do Pic2Mag or Epicycles have ads?
Neither Pic2Mag nor Epicycles shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pic2Mag or Epicycles?
Pic2Mag ships an update every 31 months, and Epicycles every 5 days. Most recently, Pic2Mag was updated on October 8, 2026 and Epicycles on September 21, 2026.

Other comparisons