Why Does The iPad Have No Calculator App?
More Than A Decade Later!!
Introduction
A while ago, during Apple’s WWDC 2022, Apple announced the latest version of the software for its beloved iPad, iPadOS 16, and it was a great update with so many new features and changes to so many apps.
During this update, Apple finally announced a new weather app made specifically for its line of iPad, which was a long-awaited move by Apple that should have taken place years back, however, despite finally announcing a new weather app, Apple still did not bother to announce a new calculator app for the iPad.
This means that the iPad, to this day, still does not have a native calculator app despite being the most successful tablet in the world, but why? Why is it that Apple never introduced an iPad calculator app in the first place?
For years, there was no explanation for this, but now we do have a better idea.
The main story behind this
The main reason behind this was always the fact that Steve Jobs was a perfectionist and wanted everything to be as good as can be in every single product.
The story is that when designing the original Ipad, the designing team didn’t design a new Calculator app specific to the Ipad but instead took the easier route and ended up stretching out the IOS calculator app so that it can actually fit the Ipad larger screen.
Then, a while later, while Steve Jobs was checking the Ipad Prototype before its big launch, he thought this app was surely not fit to be used by Apple users.
A month before the final release, Steve Jobs called Scott Forstall, who was the man responsible for the software design on the iPhone and iPad, into his office, and says to him, “Where is the new design for the calculator? This looks awful.” He said, “What new design?” This is what we are shipping with. Steve said, “No, pull it we can’t ship that.”
Scott would then fight a lot for it to stay in, but he knew he had to get their UI team involved to design a new look for the calculator, but there was no way they could do it a month before the release, which was a very short time frame, so they instead decided to remove it and not include it.
Why is it still not available today?
The presence of the calculator app is of such low priority to Apple that, to this day, nobody has worked on the app, and the Ipad still, years later, has no native calculator and instead forces people to download a third-party app from the app store.
In a recent interview with Marques Brownlee, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, when asked about the lack of a calculator app, said that they found no way to build a unique or impressive calculator app and that simply using a simple one is not innovative enough or worth it for them.
Conclusions and personal thoughts
Who knows when Apple will try to find a solution to this. Who knows if there will ever be a native app, but this problem symbolizes Apple’s Ideology and the way this company works. Think about it in any way, but removing an app completely since it is not good enough, is simply such an Apple move.
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