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Leopard Love: Apple boosts Calculator

OS X's Calculator application is something I basically ignore. Between Spotlight and Terminal's bc, I rarely if ever use it. So it was a pleasant and welcome surprise when TUAW reader Roberto Mateu gave us a heads up that Leopard's calculator was updated with better RPN support.

Calculator has done RPN for some time--if you're still running Tiger, you can see the old version by selecting View > RPN for any of the three calculator types. Under Tiger, the = button changed to Enter and that was about it. Leopard has updated the RPN calculator by adding multi-line entry so you can see your stack as it grows. It's a much nicer way to use RPN and TUAW heartily approves.



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OS X's Calculator application is something I basically ignore. Between Spotlight and Terminal's bc, I rarely if ever use it. So it was a...
 

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Pancho

@mmoore

For the iPhone try http://scicalc.belfry.com/

Mathpad is still the best calculator eva! ( http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwidholm/MathPad/ ). Mark, please port Mathpad to the iPhone.

December 10 2007 at 11:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Pancho's comment
Stephen Lang

I would be happy with a Universal binary of MathPad for now...

December 11 2007 at 12:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Charles

Wow, I haven't seen anything this good since my old HP-35, I grew up on RPN but none of the 3rd party calcs seemed to come close. I never knew this was in Calculator.app, thanks much for pointing it out. The only way this could be better is if it had a Dietzgen Slide Rule mode.. ha.

December 10 2007 at 9:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mmoore

someone please port this to the iphone, quick.

December 10 2007 at 5:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rjbs

Calling this a step up is sort of weird. This simply makes it usable. Using RPN without being able to see the stack is insane.

December 10 2007 at 5:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Thomas

Why not just use Grapher, which comes with the OS? It's sadly overlooked, I think. Not only is it a great graphing program, but if you erase the "y=" part, it does a fine job as a calculator, with the full array of functions. The only thing better than RPN, in my opinion, is being able to write the whole equation out with parentheses and all (and grapher formats fractions and exponents very nicely), which you can of course edit as needed.

December 10 2007 at 5:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
GothGod

Mein godt in himmel! So here have I been looking through tons of calculation application, with no one fitting my needs, and all I had to do was look in the menus of the standard one. (I feel stupid right now, but it will pass once I explain this to others...)

December 10 2007 at 5:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adrian vG

What is RPN?

December 10 2007 at 4:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Adrian vG's comment
CW

Reverse Polish Notation

December 10 2007 at 5:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Seb Payne

I don't know if this was in Tiger but the Binary/Hex calculator are very very handy for a Computer Science student like myself - the envy of those fools using Windows Calc :)

December 10 2007 at 4:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Seb Payne's comment
Marcos

Windows built-in calc has HEX and Binary modes. I use them a lot. I don't know how it compares to Leopard's calculator though.

December 10 2007 at 5:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
peeweejd

oh snap!

i didnt know it had RPN? I HATE algebraic calculators.

December 10 2007 at 4:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Brian Harris

Nice! Now if only they would extend that same functionality to the iPhone! RPN calculators are so nice. Sadly my trusty HP 48 was stolen two years ago.

December 10 2007 at 4:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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