Easter Archives - Shapiro Consultants

The best-hidden macOS and iOS Easter egg from PCalc is now its own app

March 25, 2022
No Comments

You may have been using the popular calculator app PCalc for years, not realizing that there was a secret game hidden inside. Now, it's been separated as its own app, available to download for free from the App Store for iOS and macOS.

Called About by PCalc by developer James Thomson, you can manipulate the app's logo by flicking it around, changing the gravity, throwing bananas at it and even driving a car.

And if that's not enough, you can control all of this through a keyboard or gamepad… because why not?

Usually, 'About' screens in apps will show the team responsible for creating the app, with links to their social handles and even a tip jar to help reward them for their efforts. However, if you press a certain command in PCalc's about section, a fun hidden game pops up, and it's this game that has become a separate app.

Bananas, fire, gravity and cars

About by PCalc on macOS — (Image credit: TechRadar)

I've been a user of PCalc for years on iOS. It's an app that's tried to keep up with the new features that Apple brings out every year at WWDC, its developer conference.

Including customizable widgets in iOS 14 was particularly useful, and made the app a fair bit better than Apple's own calculator app. But it was PCalc's Easter egg that was the main reason why it stayed on my main home screen on my iPhone.

The About app doesn't have a purpose – I see it more like a fidget app. Something to play with as you're commuting on the subway or for when the Wi-Fi goes down.

But I've found my iPhone 13 Pro gets very hot if I use too much of the flame, light, and cereal effects, so be warned if you pass your device to kids who will most likely want to press every button repeatedly. However, using About on macOS with the M1 Pro chip in my MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021), I noticed there was barely any slowdown, and the fans still didn't turn on.

PCalc’s About screen has evolved to its next form, as a standalone app called “About by PCalc” for iOS and Mac:https://t.co/2lIqbEm4MgThe tagline calls it “The Best About Screen”, and taglines would never lie to you. It’s completely free, with no ads or trackers, so enjoy! pic.twitter.com/5c4yzKLzLdMarch 24, 2022

Playing with my 8BitDo Pro 2 controller was also a surreal moment, where I could drive a car to a hidden castle on the macOS version.

Essentially, it's an app that makes no sense – its purpose is to be a fun distraction for whatever situation you may find yourself in. Some apps don't need a reason to stay on your home screen, they just need to be fun, and that's what this app has in droves.

Instagram tells us why it brought back chronological feeds

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

March 24, 2022
No Comments

Windows 11 has an Easter egg where you can spin the Settings cog in certain parts of the interface.

The nifty spinning animation was highlighted by The Verge, who reported on the ability to do this in the Notepad app after a denizen of Reddit posted about it. Further additions to that Reddit thread include the observation that the ability is also present in the new Task Manager, at least in the dev and beta builds for Windows 11 testers.

Again, this is the same deal – bottom-left, there’s a cog icon that you can spin, and it’s a surprisingly addictive little extra.

Presumably we can expect more cogs to be fully spinnable elsewhere in the interface of Windows 11 in the future, too.

Windows 11 Notepad Spinning Cog — (Image credit: Microsoft)

Analysis: Some Windows extras are pretty obvious, others not so much…

Hidden extras in Windows are nothing new, of course, and indeed they can go quite some time undiscovered. Very recently an enterprising user managed to find an Easter egg in the very first version of Windows, somehow, which comprised of a secret list of developers who worked on Windows 1.0 (one of them being a certain Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve).

So that particular nugget lay undiscovered for nearly 37 years before it was stumbled across. Makes you wonder if there are some incredibly well-hidden secrets in Windows 10 or 11 (or indeed other recent versions of Microsoft’s desktop operating system). We’re betting there are, somewhere…