Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

Calculator

The new Calculator is far more potent than the humble, black-and-white, four-function program—the last remaining bit of the Mac OS's original 1984 design—that chugged along until 2002. The Tiger Calculator can act as a scientific calculator for students and scientists, a conversion calculator for metric and U.S. measures, and even a currency calculator for world travelers.

The little Calculator widget in the Dashboard is quicker to open, and it's great for quick four-function number crunches. But the standalone Calculator program is far more powerful. For example:

• The calculator has three modes: Basic, Advanced, and—new in Tiger—Programmer (a hexadecimal calculator; see Figure 10-1). Switch among them by choosing the appropriate command from the View menu (or pressing ⌘-1 for Basic,⌘-2 for Advanced, or ⌘-3 for Programmer).

  Tip

  You can also cycle among the three modes by repeatedly clicking what, on most windows, is the Zoom button (the green round dot at upper-left). It's a first for the Mac—a Zoom button that changes function each time you click it—but it's kind of neat.

• You can operate the calculator by clicking the onscreen buttons, but it's much easier to press the corresponding number and symbol keys on your keyboard.

  Tip

  If you have a laptop, don't miss the embedded numeric keypad, superimposed on the right side of the keyboard and labeled on the keys in a different color ink. When you press the Fn key in the lower-left corner of the keyboard, typing these keys produces ...