When the first iPad launched in 2010, it did so without an app that its users would immediately miss: the calculator.
A few years ago, the theory was circulating that this was a response to Steve Jobs’ perfectionism. The application that should have been delivered with the original iPad was, according to him and according to what they say, too big and not at all optimized for Tablet.
And since then, it seems that no one has found the magic formula to design an application that Steve Jobs would have been satisfied with and that users can use on their iPad to add, subtract, multiply and divide.
But what is the exact reason why the iPad, even today, does not include a calculator?
Steve Jobs, the perfectionist
In 2016, a Twitter user named Tangoshukudai explained:
“When they were prototyping the iPad, they brought the calculator from iOS, but stretched it to fit the screen. It’s been that way since the early prototypes started, and everyone at Apple has assumed it would be launched that way.”
It was only a month before its release that Steve Jobs entered the scene. Seeing the design, Apple’s then-CEO called Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice president, into his office. Software iOS of the time, to ask for an explanation.
Steve Jobs found the calculator on the iPad “terrifying” and, lacking time to design one before the first model was released, decided not to include it.
“Since then it has been such a low priority that no one is interested in working on it when there are other more important things to work on,” Tangoshukudai said in 2016.
The current Senior Vice President of Engineering for Software of the company, Craig Federighi, would confirm this theory years later. In an interview with YouTuber Marques Brownlee in 2020, Federighi admitted that he hadn’t been able to create a calculator worthy of the iPad.
“There are things we haven’t done because we’d like to do something really special along those lines. Obviously it’s easy to make a calculator, but to make an app where you say ‘wow, that’s ‘is the best calculator for iPad’ [es algo más complicado] We want to do it when we can do it very well,” he explained.
The same can be said of the Weather app, which also didn’t debut in the Tablet from Apple at the moment. Federighi encouraged users to search for a good alternative in the App Store.
Let’s Hear Craig Federighi: Looking for Alternatives in the App Store
Let’s believe Federighi’s words and show that it’s enough for them not to have launched the Calculator app on the iPad. For the moment, therefore, it seems that we will have to make do with the applications that already exist.
One of our favorites is Calcbot 2, which is free to download and offers both standard calculations and more advanced scientific options. The free version includes advertising, but you can get rid of it for $1.99.
Other App Store options are PCalc, Calculator HD++, and Calculator HD Pro Lite, among others. Apple may not have released its own calculator for the iPad yet, but luckily there are plenty of alternatives to choose from.
Is there any other way to use calculator on iPad?
Whatever the reason why the calculator hasn’t arrived on the iPad yet, the most curious thing is that in reality the Tablet Apple has a hidden calculator. To access it, you will have to ask Siri.
Ask “Siri, what is 10 x 12?” and he will give you the answer: 120. In addition, the calculation will be displayed on the screen, which will allow you to easily check that he has understood you correctly.
You can ask it for simple calculations, such as finding 10% of 100, what 15 minus 7 is, and dividing 28.96 by 5.
