Richard Outerbridge writes in on a list I subscribe to to say that the calculator that is part of Apple's latest operating system, Panther, produced wrong results. Here's his post to that list:

The flagship Calculator application that ships with Apple's Panther is so sick as to be shameful.
Two examples:
  • From basic mode enter 12,000,000.
    Go to Convert->Area... Choose "From: Square Inch" and "To: Acre". Press OK. The displayed result is zero (0). Press '='. The displayed result is 1.44. The correct answer is actually 1.91307009488827.
  • Go to View->Advanced. Try "10000/(2^32)". The displayed result is 454.5454545454546^32. Press '='. Nothing changes. The correct answer is actually 0.00000232830643.
This could be the first piece of software that someone (that is, Apple) could get sued for, disclaimers of fit-for-purpose,
blah, blah, blah, all to the side.
It's utterly unreliable, yet seemingly so simple, basic and user-friendly!
Apple should make a special out-of-band update to their Calculator, if only to avoid the embarrassment of a prospective Windows switcher finding he can't get a Macintosh to even do basic math correctly, let alone relying on it for doing any "serious" day-to-day work.

One of the great things about Apple's calculator is its conversion engine, a handy tool when you need to do some currency conversion or convert feet to kilometres. If the mistakes discovered by Outerbridge make you nervous, here's an alternative to Apple's tool. It's called ConvertIt. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising.