Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

Calculator

You may feel a tiny twinge of shame for using your expensive Macintosh for pocket-calculator features—but don’t. The Calculator program looks good, works well, and even has a few hidden tricks up its digital sleeve.

Before you read the following hints, however, make sure you know the two most basic Calculator secrets of all:

• The calculator has two modes: Basic and Advanced (a scientific-calculator mode). Switch between them by selecting your preferred mode in the View menu, or just press

  

  -1 for Basic mode and

  

  -2 for Advanced mode. For hidden additional modes, just keep reading!

• Sure, 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.

Note

Some of the calculator operations use unusual keystrokes. For example, to multiply, you need to hit Shift-8; to divide, hit the slash ( /) key; and to add, hit Shift- =. The rest the operations either use self-evident keystrokes like a hyphen (-) for subtraction, or simply don’t have corresponding keystrokes, as with Memory Recall.

The Talking Calculator

Believe it or not, you can make your Calculator speak each key you press—a glamorous feature that can actually be fairly useful. For one thing, it ensures that you don’t mistype as you keep your ...