Why $3 trillion worth of a company can’t make a simple calculator?!
If you are an iPad user, you probably noticed that iPad doesn’t have a native calculator app. Isn’t it crazy that most leading product on the market has no calculator?! A company with a $3 trillion market cap could not make a simple calculator?! Well, In this story I am going to explain why Apple could not make a calculator for its iPad!
The first generation of the iPad was introduced back in January 2010. A month before the presentation Steve Jobs checks the new product’s software and tells that he wants to meet with Scott Forstall who was a leading software development team for the iPad at that time. When they meet, Steve Jobs asks for a new design for the calculator. At that moment the iPad had the same calculator as iPhone but a scaled version since iPad’s screen size is much bigger than iPhone. Scott Forstall replies that there is no new design for a calculator and tries to convince Jobs that it is not much important. But Jobs says whether you show me a new design for a calculator or the product will be released without a calculator.
The reason why Jobs did not like the calculator app was its design. As you can see in the picture above, the button size and numbers are too big and look ugly. To feel it better you can compare the button size with the iPad’s home button size, pretty big right?! So that was the main reason why the first generation of iPad was released without a native calculator app. However, that was not the first calculator Jobs had trouble with. Steve Jobs did not like the first design of a native calculator for the Apple Macintosh. He requests to change the design of the calculator several times, and every time he found a new mistake. In the end, the software development team gives up and let Jobs design the calculator, so Jobs designed it by himself.
However, nowadays Steve Jobs is not the CEO of the company anymore, why Apple still did not make a calculator for its iPad?
Well, Craig Federigh the current senior vice president of software engineering at Apple answered the question in one of his interviews. He said, “I mean it’s obviously easy to create a calculator app, but creating the one that feels like ‘WOW this is the greatest iPad calculator app’ is what the firm will aim to achieve whenever it does so. That day may come”. So later Apple might include a native calculator app when they find the greatest design for the calculator.
It is not the first feature that Apple adding it lately, copy-paste feature was added a year after Android on iOS 3.0. Apple is more focused on the quality of the design, so they just don’t want to release features or products before they make sure it is the best design and gives the best user experience.
