Sometimes a simple app that has one major difference from the others can be very useful. My new calculators for Lion are not earth-shatteringly, shockingly new ideas, but because they take advantage of the new Full Screen Mode, they’re worth using.
When Mac OS X Lion was released this summer, the new Full Screen Mode seemed like one of the most useful but least anticipated new features. You could always expand a window to fill nearly the entire screen, so just having a big window was nothing new. I could tell from the start that what’s great about Full Screen Mode is how it incorporates those large windows into your workflow.
It’s very easy to switch among full screen apps using the trackpad — a three finger swipe does it. You can also set up shortcuts on your mouse or keyboard. This is a great way to keep your windows and apps organized with very little effort. I don’t always work this way, but it can be a great way to work.
So the first idea that occurred to me was, all of my most used apps should be capable of going full screen. It just makes sense. For those times when I want that kind of workflow, I want all of my apps on board.
Apple’s good old Calculator.app, sadly, did not support the new feature. So I created two calculators of my own that do.
Full Screen Calculator is a standard algebraic calculator. Full Screen RPN Calculator is the reverse polish notation version (if you don’t know what RPN is, you’ll want the regular calculator, but do consider learning RPN — here are 9 compelling reasons).
Both calculators can go full screen in Lion, but they also work in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The calculator window is also fully resizable, so you can make it as small or as big as you want.
These are very simple things that I find really help. Nothing earth-shattering here, I realize, so that’s why they’re priced at only 99 cents.