Calculator in Mojave

[adryan]

G’day, all

Something to be aware of if you use the Calculator application in Mojave in RPN mode.

When you enter them with the specially labelled keys, e and π are treated as functions when they should be treated as constants.

Instead of first lifting the stack and then writing into the X register, they immediately overwrite the contents of the X register. Entering any other number lifts the stack first as it should. So the behavior is inconsistent.

The way the Mojave Calculator works is not the usual behavior of RPN calculators. Compare HP calculators and the PCalc application in iOS.

It is an annoying bug because, in the absence of a Last X key, one can lose the result of an extended intermediate calculation. I have reported it to Apple.

This is the second problem I have reported with the Calculator in Mojave. The first involved the percent function that threw an error; this was fixed in a subsequent version of Mojave.

There is something seriously wrong when you can’t trust the calculator in your computer!

Guess I’d better re-check those calculations for orbital insertion….

Cheers,
Adrian

[martin]

I don't use the Calculator very much on macOS or iOS, but it's never a great sign when they can't such a simple app working correctly. Do you remember the iOS calculator bug where quickly entering 1 + 2 + 3 gave the wrong result because of new animations? Yikes!