In a recent tip, TUAW reader Dr. Drang told us about a bug he found on the iPhone/iPod touch's calculator. According to his research, when you type π × 2 + 5 = into the calculator you get 11.283... (the correct answer). However, when you reverse the Pi and 2, entering 2 × π + 5, the answer given is 7.

This error can be demonstrated by entering Pi (3.141592654) manually, instead of using the Pi button -- you will get the correct answer each time. Therefore, this error only shows up when you use the Pi button.

So, be sure to read up on this bug from the tipsters website before you use the calculator for anything too important.

Update: Reader Vineet writes in the comments to note that he believes this behavior is typical of stack-based calculators and should be considered more of an operator-expectations issue than a true bug. Dr. Drang responds (with a little bit of attitude) to disagree, maintaining that the behavior is a legitimate bug.

Thanks for the tip, Dr. Drang!

Apple Insider is reporting that the New York City Department of Education has put all shipments of Macs to schools on complete hold while they're apparently waiting for Apple to fix a Wifi connectivity issue with OS X (which should be fixed with the 10.5.3 update). And Apple is apparently scrambling to get it worked out -- they've sent an apologetic email to faculty and have asked schools to try and separate any orders of computers that won't need wireless (that will use a regular ethernet hookup) to ship now.

Unfortunately, there's no hint of exactly how many Macs we're talking about here, but if this is a substantial number of computers, and word gets out causing other organizations to delay shipments as well, Apple will feel more and more pressure to get the problem fixed ASAP. Bad news for the kids who want Macs in New York City (that's the DoE's seal on the right, in case you didn't recognize it), but good news for anyone else having this problem -- Apple's working hard on a fix.

Thanks, Rich!

In this trivial video, someone shows what happens to the iPhone when the stopwatch has been running for over 1,000 hours. You may ask yourself, "Who runs their iPhone's stopwatch for over 41 days?" And we asked ourselves the same thing. But what happens is most definitely surprising -- and brings a whole new meaning to geek.

[via Daring Fireball]

Users of Linotype FontExplorer X may want to hold off on the 10.5.2 update ... if it's not already too late. It seems to start up fine, but once you do, clicking a stack will cause the Dock to hang; that's just one symptom, there are problems reported with several applications crashing while FontExplorer X is running.

Suspicions are circulating that a change in font handling may be the culprit, but FontExplorer X is the common thread in most complaints. There are discussions going on at creativebits, Apple.com and at the FontExplorer X discussion board. If you're a Leopard user and a heavy user of FontExplorer, you'll probably want to watch those discussions to see the solution when it surfaces.

Thanks Ivan!

Update: Seems like the problem is solved, version up. And let's have a round of applause for responsive developers while we're downloading.

Now this is just getting silly. Apparently there is a bug with the iPhone where if you try to automatically sync more than eight ringtones up, only the first eight will sync. Nine, according to Apple, is too many ringtones to automatically sync up at one time. To get more than nine on, you've got to select the actual ringtones in iTunes, and set the iPhone to manually sync "selected ringtones."

We can't see how there's any feasible reason for that-- except that somehow, in Apple's contracts with AT&T or the record companies, it was specified that only eight ringtones can be synched at any one time. Loony. Either that, or this a just plain passive-aggressive swipe at the folks actually trying to get ringtones past Apple on the iPhone.

At any rate, slow down on the ringtone syncing, there, buddy. Nine is way too many.

Despite Keynote's maturity, a significant bug remains. Several users are reporting that pressing the "Play" button after composing a project causes the machine to immediately reboot.

From what's been reported so far, it seems to be limited to laptops, specifically iBooks and MacBooks, with and without an external monitor attached. At this point, no fix has been found.

Have any of you experienced this problem? Can you lend a hand in the troubleshooting?

Thanks, tipster!

AppleHound has posted a list of all the (supposedly) reproducible bugs they could find in iPhone 1.0. There's 68 in total, and they range from various system hangs (the Phone app will hang if you start a sync while editing a contact photo) to many different UI/Usability bugs. Some of the usability bugs are a little iffy if you ask me-- many of them, like the "bug" where photo albums with less than 20 images don't display an actual number of images, seem to be "working as intended" (because why would you need an image count when you can easily see how many images are there?), and others have already been shot down according to the Apple HIG.

But on the other hand, I can't really fault AppleHound for being such sticklers. First of all, this is a cell phone that costs $600, and you should get what you pay for-- quibbling about interface quirks now means there's a much better chance of getting them fixed in a future firmware update. And second, this is Apple we're talking about. While other cell phone companies get complaints about call reception and service outages, these are complaints about tiny, half-a-second visual inconsistencies. Heck, I love my Razr, and the screen goes nuts without reason almost daily. There's nothing wrong with holding Apple to a higher standard, and maybe if Apple is kept on their toes with the iPhone, hopefully other cell phone companies will find themselves with their feet held to the fire as well.

Thanks, Leonard Nimrod!

There are bound to be bugs in any first generation product, and unfortunately this has been especially true for new Apple devices. It's only been a day since the iPhone went on sale, but already we're hearing of some nagging issues. But fear not, for you the user have the power to change the iPhone world for the better. If you already have an ADC account, you're all ready to start submitting bugs to the iPhone team. Head on over to bugreport.apple.com and go crazy– just make sure you submit responsibly and stick to the official description format, because someone has to read through each bug you submit.

Jason O'Grady of ZDNet posts that thousands of Windows users are having problems with iTunes 7.1.1, which they believe will not allow them to properly search the iTunes store. Their search goes into an endless wait, and then they get a message that their iTunes request could not be completed.

It seems to me that Apple's response, namely that the "network connection timed-out" error is an Internet problem not a software problem, sounds reasonable. When iTunes connects to the store, it's sending out a request for what is essentially a webpage and this request can hang for any number of network reasons--including those on the Apple end.

O'Grady suggests that users may have to uninstall iTunes 7.1.1 and re-install iTunes 7.0, but I'm not sure that is necessary. The original Apple discussion list thread is here.

Among several Vista patches released yesterday, Microsoft included one meant to allow iPods to disconnect without getting corrupted, CNet reports. Apple has previously addressed several iTunes/Vista compatibility issues. So do these new patches do the trick? Is it safe to eject your iPod without iTunes? TUAW suggests you err on the side of caution. As there may continue to be problems with Vista's "Safely Remove Hardware" option, Apple suggests you only use the iTunes eject function to remove your iPod.

Has your magsafe adapter stopped working properly? One of the connector pins might be stuck. Apple has published[1] a support article on troubleshooting stuck pins. If you remove your adapter and see one or more of the pins stuck down (the two outer pins in this picture are affected), Apple suggests you try unplugging and replugging the adapter to allow the pins to reset themselves. If that doesn't work, you can use your finger or a pencil eraser to nudge the pin back into position. If all else fails? Visit your local Apple service provider.

[1] It's at the top of their current support RSS feed. Readers point out that it's been published before.

TUAW reader Rae tipped us off that the new iTunes 7.1 sorting features are causing problems with the iPod's scroll-by-letter functionality. Items that start with the word "The" (like "The Breakers" or "The Danse") are sorted by their main phrase ("Breakers", "Danse") and not by "The", but when you scroll through your music, the iPod gets mixed up and the letter 'T' keeps flashing almost randomly.

I sorted out my music, synced my iPod and saw exactly what Rae was talking about. When scrolling by All Artists -> Albums, the following items "In Your Eyes", "The Innocent and the E Street", "Innocent Man", "The Instigator", "Invincible Summer" caused my iPod to flash "I", "T", "I", "T", "I". Very annoying!

Rae pointed us to a couple of discussion threads over at Apple's boards about this subject.

An ongoing discussion over at the Apple.com support forums led me to this tip from Macintouch about reverting your iPod back to firmware version 1.2. Many of the posters there have reported complaints about firmware 1.2.1 causing lockups. Paul Constantine writes that smart playlists have been killing his iPod, so he figured out how to downgrade. The secret lies in making sure only the 1.2 files are in your ~/Library/iTunes/iPod Software Updates/ folder and disconnecting from the Internet so you cannot download newer versions. You'll find the complete how-to here.

Office 2008 for Mac (or Office 12, if you prefer) may still be months away, but the Microsoft Mac BU team is still working to improve Office 2004 and Office v.X while we wait.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.3 Update and Microsoft Office v. X for Mac 10.1.9 Update include a variety of security and stability fixes, including a fix for the annoying DST bug in Entourage 2004 that caused calendar events scheduled on or after March 11, 2007 to be an hour off, thanks to the decision to change the start and end of Daylight Time (aka Standard Time) in the US.

The specific fixes in these updates are:

• Improvements for all Office 2004 & Office v. X applications - fixes vulnerabilities in that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.
  

• Improvements for Word 2004 - improves compatibility with recent changes to the way Rich Text Format (RTF) documents are created by Microsoft Office Word 2003 for Windows.

• Improvements for Excel 2004 - fixes an issue that causes standard deviation calculations to produce inaccurate results when the calculations are used in PivotTable reports.

• Improvements for Entourage 2004 - fixes an issue for users of Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later that causes any calendar event scheduled on or after March 11, 2007 to display on a time slot that is one hour ahead of its original start time. This issue affects all meetings that occur on or after March 11, 2007, including recurring meetings. The Japanese postal code dictionary has also been updated with the latest information as of June 2006.

Grab them from Microsoft AutoUpdate or from the downloads page. I just installed the 2004 update and nothing is broken yet, so hopefully you'll be just as lucky.

TUAW reader Evan Hindra went to sleep one night with his MacBook Pro playing music. The next morning, it wouldn't sit properly on the kitchen counter top. When he flipped over the laptop, he found that his battery had begun to bulge. He called up AppleCare and they're sending him a battery. (He continues to wonder whether the battery problems date back before the bulge to a series of unexpected shut downs.) On the bright side, his MacBook Pro didn't explode, burst into flames or start playing random Barry Manilow tracks, all of which could cause permanent and irreversible harm. If your MacBook Pro starts displaying odd symptoms, you might want to take a good look at your battery and make sure it's not going all Alien on you, as in the original version with the icky chest bursting scene.