What do the range of iPhone, Apple Watch and MacBook have in common? So is! They all have a built-in calculator app! And … do you want to know a secret? A mystery, even? There is no native iPad Calculator app.
Not a word of a lie.
Do you have an iPad? If so, now is the time to go and try to find the Calculator app. Keep looking. Go on, try looking for it. Still haven’t found it? Strange. Could it be that there is … Isn’t there a native Calculator app for iPad?
And it doesn’t seem like this will change with iPadOS 14.
In yesterday’s inaugural WWDC speech, many great new iPad features were announced. This included better apps, compact notifications, improved search, the ability to use Apple Pencil to write in text boxes, and much more.
But … there was still no native ad for iPad Calculator.
This morning, I checked Apple’s press release on iPadOS 14, to see if the news was buried there somewhere. “Maybe,” I thought, “now Apple is making progress with Augmented Reality and handwriting recognition, will it find a way to make a futuristic math app?”
But unfortunately, there was no native ad for the iPad Calculator. And that’s strange …
At this point, Apple must be doing this as an inside joke, right? The first iPad was launched more than ten years ago. That’s ten fucking years without a native calculator Is anyone in the company looking to see if they can make it to round 20?
The reason for this is unclear, but an old Reddit thread claims to have the answer. To summarize, the individual says that the first iPad calculator was just an extended iPhone version on the screen (a method that produces unpleasant experiences). The company was going to send it that way, but Steve Jobs prevented this from happening, and since then it has not been a priority.
Whatever the answer, I think I prefer the mystery. And as annoying as not having a native iPad Calculator app, it adds a juicy puzzle to the mix.
I guess all we can do is wait for iPadOS 15 and hope for the best.
(Oh, and if you want an iPad calculator, just search for one in the app store or take a look here. They exist, but not natively.)
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Posted on June 23, 2020 – 1:16 PM UTC
