Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad iPad calculator

Vspruce

Vspruce

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2019
15
19
Sweden
One of the most annoying things about the iPad is the lack of a native calculator, I guess most of you agree. How hard would it be for apple to make a direct port of the calculator like the attached image. It’s a quick mesh up that I made in Pixelmator on the iPad, merging the Apple TV remote controller “app” and a screenshot of the calculator on iPhone XR.

Doesn't it look great?
 

Attachments

  • 035E773E-564B-448E-B551-559650205A2E.jpeg
    035E773E-564B-448E-B551-559650205A2E.jpeg
    252.6 KB · Views: 321
  • Like
Reactions: Precursor
Vspruce said:
One of the most annoying things about the iPad is the lack of a native calculator, I guess most of you agree. How hard would it be for apple to make a direct port of the calculator like the attached image. It’s a quick mesh up that I made in Pixelmator on the iPad, merging the Apple TV remote controller “app” and a screenshot of the calculator on iPhone XR.

Doesn't it look great?
Click to expand...
I just use Google’s calculator.
 
Did Apple ever give a rationale for its lack of iPad calculator?

Logical to believe that it was Apple's decision to purposely omit the calculator, when it's been the same iOS (up until the forthcoming iPadOS this year) that runs on iPhones and has had the calculator builtin.
 
Last edited:
sparksd said:
https://www.cultofmac.com/421893/why-the-ipad-has-never-shipped-with-a-calculator-app/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the interesting link; but still hard to believe that Apple adds so many features with each release of iOS that it can't utilize iOS's own calculator. :rolleyes:

Thankfully this is inconsequential, considering you can still freely download great calculators that are at least as good as Apple itself would provide, such as:

Calculator for iPad! by 7th Gear
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calculator-for-ipad/id443932954
 
Last edited:
It is disappointing that no calculator utility was ever included. In the meantime, I find The Calculator app (per above article) very good if you can stand the ads in the lower display, which to me is easy to ignore. Key to me is a memory store function, which not many include.
 
Richard8655 said:
It is disappointing that no calculator utility was ever included. In the meantime, I find The Calculator app (per above article) very good if you can stand the ads in the lower display, which to me is easy to ignore. Key to me is a memory store function, which not many include.
Click to expand...

I wanted a full-function calculator with RPN so I bought PCalc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BigMcGuire
I’ve always wondered why they don’t include the calculator from the iPhone.

I have Calculator Pro, the ads can get annoying when you have to dismiss a full screen one but it does the job.
 
It's the last thing on my list of things I care about. There are exactly 10million, 500 and thirty two thousand calculators in the app store.
 
Vspruce said:
One of the most annoying things about the iPad is the lack of a native calculator, I guess most of you agree. How hard would it be for apple to make a direct port of the calculator like the attached image. It’s a quick mesh up that I made in Pixelmator on the iPad, merging the Apple TV remote controller “app” and a screenshot of the calculator on iPhone XR.

Doesn't it look great?
Click to expand...

I may be the lone dissenting voice. If I need a calculator, I have my watch, my phone, any number of free calculator apps from the App Store for the iPad or just use the Spotlight search (works the same as it does on macOS). No need to bother Cupertino with such minutia.
 
that which you find minutia is what you pay the big bucks for. how much minutia goes into every single apple product astounds me at times. and at the same time, leave off something people have been complaining about since day one? you, my friend, are the reason why apple is spending your hard earned money on caviar.
 
Tooldog said:
that which you find minutia is what you pay the big bucks for. how much minutia goes into every single apple product astounds me at times. and at the same time, leave off something people have been complaining about since day one? you, my friend, are the reason why apple is spending your hard earned money on caviar.
Click to expand...

IMO, the calculator issue is the kind of thing one asks Apple to provide, and when they don't, one moves on to another solution. I am too busy to spend time kvetching over something for which there is a simple and free solution.

Nice to know that Apple is buying caviar with my hard earned money. Does your boss have any say in how you spend your paycheck? Didn't think so. Moving on.
 
dwfaust said:
I may be the lone dissenting voice. If I need a calculator, I have my watch, my phone, any number of free calculator apps from the App Store for the iPad or just use the Spotlight search (works the same as it does on macOS). No need to bother Cupertino with such minutia.
Click to expand...

As you say, simple calculators are abundant. The iPad could be an amazing graphing calculator, but that's beyond what I would expect Apple themselves would make, unless they were to make it part of iWork so it could have deep integration into Numbers/Keynote.
 
Richard8655 said:
And it's one of the last things I'm willing to pay for. Something that really every good OS should already come with. There are plenty of free ones in the app store that do the job quite well for the majority of user needs.
Click to expand...
Well said. The thing is that the iPad's iOS has been the same iOS on the iPhone; and the same iOS with a calculator already built-in to it; and Apple made a decision to prevent use of the iOS calculator on the iPad, rather than simply customize the resource for use on the iPad.
 
@dwfaust,
Using the boss analogy, what employee is allowed to consistently fail? If we are Apple's product boss they would listen to us. We are not, and they do not. Going all the way back to the Apple IIc I've given them my money. I don't want to know the total I've spent on Apple products. Enough to buy a Luxury SUV in 2019 I have no doubt. In doing so we have created a monster that doesn't listen. We don't get the products we want, we don't get repairs. There has to be some overtly actionable product liability reason before they do a callback repair, only to end said program in short order AND refusing to repair some. We paid full Apple tax for an Apple product that failed because Apple screwed up... we should never be on the hook for that. This isn't a kickstarter. Why do so many people give Apple a free pass? (or any other powerful conglomerate for that matter)

Is a calculator for iPad really that hard and expensive to make? Clearly they can't get a decent product out the door lately. Tim really isn't a product person.

--side note: Your Billy Joel quote caused me to listen to two whole albums!
 
Ugh, this has been a huge pet peeve of mine for ages. Not just with the Calculator app, too - it annoys me to no end that there are multiple iOS apps that are not available on the iPad and it just seems so careless. As far as the Calculator app goes, sure, you can use Spotlight, and you can download a third party app in the App Store which may be buggy/ad-ridden/paid, but why should we have to when Apple already codes a very nice Calculator app themselves? Apple is known for generally having elegant software/hardware solutions and this is the opposite of that, IMO.

Your rendering looks great - I’d hope for something like this, only with a regular window option so we can use the scientific calculator and have it side by side and/or in a Slide Over window with other apps.

Seriously, though - all the missing apps should make their way to the iPad. That includes the Phone app (for wifi calling and hopefully voicemail access, somehow), Health and Activity, Weather, and even Wallet, now that people with the Apple Card will use that app to review purchase history and the like.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back