New version of Graphing Calculator

JAMES.R.DUFFEY - 12:55am Jan 12, 2005 PST

It is nice to see that old friend Graphing Calculator upgraded for OS X. I have used Graphing Calculator for a variety of applications over the years, and still go into OS 9 to use it. I found it to be one of the most useful items that Apple included in the system software and was sad not to see it included in OS X. Now it is back.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07947>

In the absence of an OS X version of Graphing Calcualtor, I found MathPad to be a more than acceptable substitute. If you want math calculation capabilities with graphing you should check out MathPad:

<http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwidholm/MathPad/>

It is a powerful alternative to Graphing Calculator, albeit it with a bit steeper learning curve. It is one of those great Mac applications that is free, and worth substantially more than what you pay for it. The graphs it produces are very nice and quite customizable, although they require a bit more effort to manipulate than those in Graphing Calculator do. The current version, 2.6.4, runs in OSX and on any system since OS8.6 with CarbonLib.

MathPad is also a good alternate to MathCad for the small or non-power user, It has one significant advantage over MathCad, The variable and constant values used in calculations do not need to be inserted in the instructions before they are used, MathPad reads your instructions through twice to incorporate values at the end of the instructions in equations at the beginning of the calculation. Like MathCad, you can intersperse text with calculations to produce a document describing the calculations.

I don't want to steal or steer business away from Graphing Calculator, but if you want good math calculating and graphing capabilities and don't need them often enough to justify purchasing graphing Calculator, you might want to look into MathPad. - Duffey