if you're deep in the apple ecosystem
you've probably noticed that the iphone
apple watch and mac all have calculator
apps
but the ipad doesn't this has left many
people wondering why
and that's exactly what i'll explain
right now when the ipad was being
created
a guy named scott forstall was leading
its software development
he was responsible for the skeuomorphic
interface featured early on in ios
and the calculator app included with the
ipad prototype
was simply a scaled-up version of the
iphones
the software team assumed the final
product would ship with this calculator
but once steve jobs saw it one month
before the ipad's release
he met with forstall right away saying
where's the new design for the
calculator this looks awful
forstall replied what new design this is
what we're shipping with
job said no pull it we can't ship that
although forstall tried to convince jobs
to keep the calculator on ipad
he was given an ultimatum redesigned the
calculator's user interface to make it
look good on the ipad's larger display
or it won't be included with the ipad's
release
just weeks away forestall knew his team
wouldn't be able to create
a new app from scratch so the original
ipad
shipped without a calculator forcing
users to download third-party solutions
from the app store
most of which had ads and provided a
worse user experience
than simply including a scaled-up
version of the iphone calculator
it may seem odd for jobs to have such
strict standards
for something as simple as a calculator
app but this wasn't out of the ordinary
for him
in fact this wasn't even his first
calculator fiasco
back in 1981 when steve jobs was leading
development of the macintosh
he wasn't satisfied with the initial
design of the system calculator
he told chris espinosa the creator well
it's a start but basically it stinks the
background color is too dark
some lines are the wrong thickness and
the buttons are too big
so espinoza told jobs he'd continue
working on it
until he was satisfied but every time he
created a new iteration of the
calculator
jobs would point out new things he
didn't like about it so espinosa decided
to let
jobs be the designer instead by creating
a program
that allowed every visual attribute of
the calculator to be customized
from line thickness to button size job
sat down with the new program
and spent 10 minutes adjusting its
design until he was satisfied
and that calculator ended up being used
with the original macintosh in 1984
until mac os 9 whose latest release was
in 2001
but what about today steve jobs isn't
ceo of apple anymore
but they still haven't included a
calculator on the ipad
well it just so happens that mkbhd or
marquez brownlee
asked craig federighi about this in an
interview here's what he said
the ipad still does not have a default
weather
and calculator app and they want to know
why
you know there's some things that we we
have not done because we to do it we
would want to do something really
distinctly
great in that space and uh i think it's
obviously easy to create a calculator
app
uh but creating one that feels like wow
this is this is
this is the greatest ipad calculator app
that it felt like i think we
we we want to do it when we can do it
really really well and and
we we honestly have just uh uh
haven't gotten around to doing it great
so uh that day that day may come but uh
so they won't create an ipad calculator
until it's truly great
which is essentially the same position
jobs took in 2010.
the problem is they don't even appear to
be working on an ipad calculator
since they've had over a decade to make
it happen but we've seen apple suffer
from this sort of
analysis paralysis before they didn't
include copy and paste in ios
until years after android since they
wanted to make sure it was truly great
and they didn't include an app library
until ios 14
something android already had for a
decade while it's easy to become
frustrated by these quirks in apple's
philosophy
it's helpful to recognize that their
restraint when adding new features
probably helps more than it hurts it
ensures they
only add features that improve the user
experience
instead of making it messy complex or
counter-intuitive
also apple's proven that they respond to
customer feedback
in the same interview with mkbhd
federighi talked about siri and how it
should behave
after a voice command marquez brownlee
said it's strange that siri doesn't
dismiss itself
after a few seconds of completing an
inquiry instead users are forced to
swipe back to their content
later on when ipad os 14 was released
apple quietly
updated siri to automatically disappear
after about 5 seconds
something that makes the experience much
more pleasant especially when using
hands-free voice commands
so based on apple's previous actions i
do expect to see a native ipad
calculator app
i just hope it's sooner rather than
later
alright guys thanks for watching till
the end this is greg from apple
explained and i'll see you
in the next video