[emsy]

The iPad is the „you’re holding it wrong“ philosophy applied to the whole OS. The problem is Apple is unable to make tradeoffs, which is exemplified by the lack of a calculator app because „you can’t just take the iPhone calculator and resize it for the iPad“ (yes you can and it’s better than not having a calculator so at all).

[mejutoco]

I wrote an article about the lack of calculator for the ipad, and an actual port of the ios calculator as a PWA, if anybody misses this app on the ipad. Free, no ads.

https://mejuto.co/the-ipad-did-not-have-a-calculator-so-i-po...

[dinckelman]

They could have EASILY done it back at the original launch. They had everything necessary to get it done, except for common sense.

Even with the skeuomorphic design, split half for the history, half for a regular calculator. Flip it sideways, get a scientific calculator

[ghaff]

On the other hand, I'll argue pretty strongly that the determination of the Wintel ecosystem to make a one-size fits all tablet/laptop compromise is precisely one of the major reasons why such a device never really took off--including in the case of the Microsoft Surface.

[kergonath]

Which is why there always have been hundreds of calculator apps, from the crudest to the most polished. How is that a problem? Sure, it’s nice to have one out of the box, but is this really a problem?

[nkozyra]

> The problem is Apple is unable to make tradeoffs

I think the problem is they're very conscious of cannabalizing their own product line.

If the average person could use a $500 iPad ($399 + keyboard + mouse) instead of a bare minimum macbook air ($1000+), they would.

[emsy]

I agree, but this is a new problem for Apple. The iPhone was famously introduced as a cannibalizing product.