Every Mac comes with a calculator app. Calculators are almost a dime a dozen. Many are free, most are inexpensive, and even the good ones won’t set you back much more than lunch.
How much is a handy calculator that goes beyond Apple’s calculator worth to Mac users? And, what makes a calculator worth a price tag? How many calculators are living on your Mac?
Questions, Questions, Questions
Basically, a calculator calculates. It’s what it calculates and how it calculates that makes it worth a price tag.
While not my favorite calculator, Handy Calculator brings a big, bold, elegant calculator to your Mac’s screen.
It sports an Apple look (as if it were something Apple would design) but doesn’t have color design options.
The buttons are big, convenient, and easy to see and click. When not active, Handy Calculator becomes nearly invisible. This one handles formulas and lets you input the whole formula before you hit Enter.
Handy Calculator looks like this on your Mac’s screen. It’s nothing special, but it’s visually obvious. You won’t have to thrash around on the screen to find it.
You’ll appreciate the subtle differences that don’t show up in free calculators.
For example, Handy Calculator lets you copy calculated results to paste into other documents. Just click and it’s copied and ready to paste.
The display handles long numbers and formulas and programmable expressions.
The built-in hotkeys handle copy and paste, hides the calculator from view, and shuts down the calculator.
Hiding the calculator becomes mostly transparent so you can see where it is on the screen but its presence doesn’t distract you from your work.
Among Mac calculators, my favorite is PCalc. It’s not cheap, but it’s easy to use and loaded with far more professional level features than Handy Calculator (RPN mode, unit conversions, hexadecimal, octal, and binary calculations, programmable functions, and more).
Yes, there’s a difference in price. Handy Calculator is priced about the same as trip to Starbucks, while PCalc is closer to a lunch price. There’s even a Dashboard Widget version included.
Multiple themes and color combinations make it a worth professional level tool for Mac users who need more than Apple’s calculator, and more than a Handy Calculator.
About Wil Gomez
My calculator needs are very basic but the one thing I use all the time is the percent key on the cheap handheld calculators I buy. Is there a simple software calculator with a percent key?
I probably have a dozen calculators on my Mac, so most of them gather dust (digitally, of course) and I rely on just a couple, including the aforementioned PCalc (probably the best).
As to functions, the Percent key is second on my list, right after having a whole bunch of digits, at least 12 numbers, more if I can get it. You can never have enough numbers on a calculator.
I have one calculator that also doubles as an old fashioned ‘paper’ calculator and streams the calculations as if printed on paper. I love that effect, though being able to print it all out would be a Godsend.
I’d pay extra for that.
Personally prefer calculator from your Mac360 post, The Calculating Mac App You Will Love To Use But Don’t Know About.