Apple Divulges Why The iPad Still Doesn’t Have A Calculator App
Image via Nadir Keklik / Shutterstock.com
In moments of hurry, you’ve probably attempted to launch the Calculator app on your iPad to perform some quick math, only to discover—once again—that it doesn’t exist.
The absence of the app is baffling, given that Apple often prides the tablet as a fitting laptop substitute. You would think for a gadget advertised as outstanding and powerfully functional, it’d be pre-installed with a core productivity tool found even in the most antique of personal computers.
There’s always Google Search, but it requires a few extra seconds of inconvenience to open and use its calculator tool. With its speedy refresh rates, it’s evident that Apple frowns upon lag time. Still, it refuses to roll out a calculator app even though the lack of it seems counterproductive.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, finally addressed in a video via tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee’s channel about why the iPad has never introduced a calculator app. He affirmed that there isn’t one yet because Apple hasn’t invented a version that will blow users’ minds and make them say, “This is the greatest iPad calculator app.”
“There’s some things that we have not done because we would want to do something really distinctly great in that space,” Federighi shared. “We want to do it when we can do it really, really well, and we honestly just haven’t gotten around to doing it great.”
His words echo criticisms reportedly made by Steve Jobs, who was said to have likened a native iPad calculator app to an iPhone app awkwardly magnified for tablet dimensions. Jobs allegedly demanded the tool to be scrapped during prototyping for the first iPad. As the story goes, Apple has never come up with an ideal version since then.
However, Federighi didn’t rule out the possibility of there ever being an iPad calculator. “That day may come,” he suggested.
He had similar thoughts about Apple releasing a proper weather app for the iPad. At present, users would be directed to the Weather Channel’s webpage upon tapping the Weather widget, rather than being shown an interface alike iOS’ Weather app.
Federighi disclosed, “It’d be easy enough to scale up our existing Weather app, but we feel like, ‘What would a great weather app for iPad be?’ Let’s do that before we do it.”
[via Cult of Mac, video via MKBHD, cover image via Nadir Keklik / Shutterstock.com]
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