Theo SlashGear, when you need a calculation on your iPad, you can type a request in Spotlight – a search feature accessed by swiping down on the home screen – and get an answer quickly. In addition, users can also ask Siri to solve that. However, in reality, there is no official calculator from Apple that iPad users have to rely on third-party calculator apps. These free calculators offer a rudimentary experience with lots of ads.
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The original calculator app from Apple is still absent from the iPad |
With the large screen on the iPad when compared to the iPhone or Apple Watch, it is clear that Apple can add more advanced functions to the calculator application for scientific calculations. So why doesn’t the company do this even basic calculator app?
This was revealed by the developers who perfected the original iPad prototype on CultofMac recently. Before running iPadOS – an operating system based on iOS but optimized for larger screens – iPad also ran iOS. Since they all developed from the same operating system, the design team brought the original application from the iPhone. The calculator app has also been ported to the iPad, but enlarged to fit the larger screen.
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The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs only noticed this redesigned calculator app a month before the iPad was scheduled to launch, and he didn’t like its design. Jobs gave Scott Forstall – one of the iPad development leaders – two choices: build a new iPad calculator app from scratch, or skip the app. But due to the deadline being only a few weeks, this application has been dropped. In the end, the developers decided to get rid of the calculator app altogether.
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Steve Jobs did not want to bring computer applications on the iPhone to the iPad because he did not like it |
More than a decade has passed since Steve Jobs introduced the first generation iPad, so far Apple has not equipped this product line with native computer applications, including the latest iPadOS 16. Apple’s vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi explained in an interview that the calculator app on the iPad has become a burden for the company over the years. Currently, no calculator app for iPad is in development. According to him, in the case of priority, it will reflect Apple’s design philosophy, becoming a truly unique innovative solution.