#Latest version of pcalc usum how to
#Latest version of pcalc usum mac os

System 7 was new, so I eventually got a copy of the massive Volume VI to see what had changed there. Eventually, I started to get the internal logic working, and built a user interface around it all. We didn't have the Internet back then - well, no web at least - so that was basically all I had to go on. I bought the books Inside Macintosh, Volumes I, II, and III, and sat down to figure it all out.

#Latest version of pcalc usum mac os

The built-in Mac OS calculator of the day was a very simple affair, and so I decided I would write a calculator that could do binary and hex, to help me with my programming. Take note of “a small project just to do X”, this will be referred to many times during this story.

#Latest version of pcalc usum how to

I was looking for a small project to learn how to program my new Mac properly, and I remembered the graphics I'd done for the control panel, and thought that they would work well for a calculator as well. So I sold all my synthesizers and my ST, and bought one of the latest Mac Classics - 4 meg of RAM, a 40 meg hard disk, and a 512x342 1-bit display. I had come to the conclusion that I was not going to be the next Jean Michel Jarre, but I really liked the way the Mac user interface worked in comparison to my old Atari. Skeuomorphism has been around a lot longer than Corinthian leather.Īt around the same time, we'd started coding using THINK Pascal, and I had begun to explore the Macintosh programming APIs in my own time. I figured it had to look authentic, and handcrafted a set of custom 1-bit black and white fake LCD digits and little buttons that you could push in.

Sadly, it doesn't survive to contradict me, but my design was likely impeccable. It was to be implemented as a Hypercard stack. One of the class projects was to design a simulated control panel for a central heating system - setting temperatures, letting you switch heat and water on and off separately, and so on. I was a student at Glasgow University's Computing Science department, taking a class in Human Computer Interaction on how to build good user interfaces. PCalc actually started out in 1992 as a design for a central heating control panel. The app you've known for all these years. PCalc is twenty years old on the 23rd of December 2012, so I thought I should take the opportunity to look back at how it has evolved over the last two decades. In some cases, a lot longer than they've been thinking. Many people using PCalc on their shiny devices today don't realise that the app has been around for a lot longer than they think.