Calculator
Need to do some quick math? The Calculator application gives you a simple calculator with all the basic number-crunching functions that your pocket calculator has. To use it, you can either click the keys with the mouse or type numbers and operators (math symbols such as +, –, and =) using the number keys on your keyboard (or numeric keypad, if you have one). Calculator also offers a paper tape (Window⇒Show Paper Tape) to track your computations — and, if you want, provide a printed record. It can even speak numbers aloud (Speech⇒Speak Button Pressed and Speech⇒Speak).
Check out the Calculator in Figure 19-1.
Figure 19-1: The Calculator (left), Convert menu (middle), and Paper Tape (right).
In my humble opinion, the most useful feature in the Calculator (after the paper tape) is the Convert menu — more specifically, the currency-conversion feature. It actually checks the Internet for the exchange rate before calculating the conversion for you. That’s very cool.
Beyond that, Calculator has three modes: Basic, Scientific, and Programmer. Basic is the default, and you access the other two modes as follows:
Pressing +2 (View⇒Scientific) turns the formerly anemic calculator ...
Get OS X Mountain Lion For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
