iPad native calculator, a piece of the puzzle 14 years late

Why is the iPad calculator 14 years late?

Craig Federighi, Apple's vice president of software engineering, said when talking about the new iPad calculator: "Apple prefers to talk about it when the technology is mature and can be presented to users as a final experience."

In 2010, the iPhone was 3 years old, And Mac computers are 30 years old. After creating all these amazing devices, Steve Jobs still defined Apple as a "mobile devices" company.

So the birth of iPad became a natural thing: a portable mobile device that can surf the Internet, watch videos and play games. After 14 years of upgrades and iterations, it has even shouted the slogan "Why should your next computer be a computer?", as if it is determined to usurp laptops.

But who wants to use a computer without a calculator?

The Missing Corner of iPadOS: Native Calculator

For a long time, iPad has been missing two pieces of the software puzzle: weather and calculator.

Since their birth, iPad and iPhone have shared the same system logic. Although it was later named iPadOS and iOS, in the eyes of users, the iPad is just an enlarged version of the iPhone without communication functions.

So it seems very strange that the iPhone has a calculator but the iPad does not.

Perhaps it was Jobs’ paranoia that created this history. In fact, the prototype of the iPad had a calculator, which was like a scaled-up version of the iPhone calculator - this was an efficient choice for the team, because no one thought calculators were a big deal at that time. .

However, after Jobs experienced the prototype, he was very dissatisfied with the team for not designing a separate calculator. He asked the team to redesign an iPad-only calculator within one month.

What happened next became obvious. The team failed to deliver a satisfactory answer within the time limit, and the iPad calculator sat dormant for more than ten years.

Interestingly, Scott Forstall, who was in charge of iOS (iPadOS) development at the time, left in 2012, and Craig Federighi took over his position and continued to be responsible for the development of iOS and macOS.

In 1984, Jobs asked the team to design a calculator specifically for Macintosh computers

During this time, users did not stop calling on Apple to launch an iPad calculator. So in 2022, Craig Federighi said in an interview that Apple wants to make a calculator easy, but they want to make a feeling that users exclaim, "This is the best calculator on the iPad." He was confident at that time, and now it seems that at that time they were already conceiving a new iPad calculator.

Users don’t have time to wait. In the absence of the iPad’s native calculator, countless third-party calculators have popped up on the iPad. Although there are many advertisements, although they are difficult to use, and although they are only enlarged versions, users still have to grit their teeth and use them.

If you have not updated to iPadOS 18, then I would recommend you to download a third-party calculator called "Solves" as a transition.

The advantages of Solves include but are not limited to the following

- No ads, clean interface

- Supports a variety of complex operations, such as percentage calculations, exponential operations and various functions

- Supports cursor Move and edit calculations at any location

- Supports viewing history and synchronizing records on multiple devices

This may be one of the best-looking and most usable calculators besides the native iPad calculator. But as Craig said, it is actually just an enlarged version of the iPhone calculator and is not specially designed for the tablet form factor.

How to define tablet applications?

If you have been through the chaotic era of early tablet computers, you will never forget the difficult-to-use system at that time.

The interface display is incomplete, the buttons drift, the UI stretching ratio is wrong... The nightmare of Android tablets is that the software cannot adapt. Apple's development ecosystem is relatively closed, and officials have extremely high requirements for software development.

Despite this, today, there are still a large number of software that are proportionally enlarged on tablet computers, and the display page and operation logic are not really developed specifically for the new form of tablet computers. This is definitely not what Apple wants. They believe that a tablet is a new form of device between a mobile phone and a laptop. If it is just an enlarged version of a mobile phone, then why not just call it iPhone Note?

AppStore 專為 iPad 選擇的 App

除了蘋果，行業其它品牌加入平板電腦賽道之後，一起豐富了「平板電腦」的生態。

蘋果為iPad 提供了磁吸鍵盤、Apple Pencil...... 種種配件組成了平板電腦產品框架—— 它可以用鍵盤打字、觸摸屏點按、畫畫、拍照...... 此外還有Microsoft 的Surface、三星Galaxy Tab 平板電腦，華為的MateBook 系列電腦，都朝著這個方向發展。

到這裡，你會發現平板電腦完成了自我詮釋，它可以做到一些筆記型電腦無法做到的事情。在 iPad 上，有一個靈魂配件：Apple Pencil，或許是平板電腦中最好用的手寫筆。

圍繞著 Apple Pencil，蘋果引導、鼓勵開發者推出更豐富的功能，讓 iPad 更為 iPad。畫畫、筆記類別的軟體是基礎，例如 Procreate、Notability、Goodnotes 等等。

而蘋果自己也在一步一步，開發出與 Apple Pencil 強相關的新功能。

- 2020 年，iPadOS 14 有了隨手寫功能，可以在任意有遊標的地方書寫文字

- 2022 年，WWDC22 推出iPadOS 16 有了無邊記APP，相當於官方的白板工具

擁有了「隨處可寫隨處可識別手寫字體」和「識別複雜手寫文字和圖案」的能力，這為現在的iPad 計算器奠定了基礎。

無論用戶對新功能反饋如何，蘋果的確是堅定地提供「only iPad can do」的新功能，或者說，是為 Apple Pencil 提供新的使用場景。

iPad 計算器，最後一塊拼圖

如果你理解了蘋果對 iPad 的定義，那麼也就理解了計算器遲到的原因。

現在的iPad 原生計算器，同樣做到了「only iPad can do」：

- 數學備忘錄功能，支援書寫高階數學表達式

- 支援基礎、科學運算式增加基礎、科學運算式種單位換算功能

- 保持與iPhone 同樣的黑橙色調

其中，最重要的更新莫過於“數學備忘錄”功能，你能像在作業本上書寫公式那樣，將簡單到複雜的數學公式寫出來。 - 當你寫入等號之後，這個表達式便成立了，並且自動得出計算結果

- 當你修改表達式內任意元素，其計算結果也會相應改變

- iPad 甚至能通過表達式，直接產生圖表

短短的一條操作邏輯鏈，蘋果在這其中做到了兩件讓人感覺舒服的事情：第一，避開用鍵盤輸入複雜的數學公式，轉而用我們最熟悉的手寫公式；第二，自動計算表達式的結果，無論它有多複雜—— 前提是它能準確地識別到你所寫的表達式。 我在實測之後發現，只要你寫的字體不過分變形，基本都能準確識別數學表達式，並且運算的結果相對較快，至少比人腦更快。

可以確認的是，整個過程還沒有 Apple Intelligence 的幫助，因為該功能到秋天才會上線，而我們更可以去想像，假設計算過程加上 AI，會是怎樣的體驗？

如果說賈伯斯在與團隊構思 iOS 雛形的時候，首要考慮的是“符合直覺”，讓不會用觸控螢幕的人也能輕鬆上手，那麼如今的計算器也遵循著這個邏輯。只要你學過數學公式，便能用 iPad 獲得更效率的計算動作，而不用按鍵找出複雜的數學符號。同時最費腦的計算過程，它也幫你做到了。

但在實現這個目標之前，蘋果做了太長的準備工作，來得確實有些太晚了。 從 iPad 誕生到現在，蘋果 CEO 經歷了從 Steve Jobs 到 Tim Cook 的傳承，蘋果軟體工程的負責人也從 Scott Forstall 變成了 Craig Federighi。 iPhone、iPad、Mac 等產品線有著更統一的軟硬體設計風格，甚至一度傳出 iPadOS 與 macOS 會融合。

Craig 所在職位的前任 Scott 曾被稱為“小喬布斯”，正是因為他的性格與行為都與喬布斯相似，可惜的是他沒能在喬布斯的推動下，將 iPad 的計算器設計出來。 Craig 補上了這一塊拼圖，目前來看，計算器的確又讓 iPad 的生產力多了一分。

近年來，人們總是樂於談論蘋果是否還有創新，以衡量蘋果公司的價值。從 iPad 計算器的誕生歷程與結果來看，蘋果所醞釀的更大創新變革「Apple Intelligence」將在秋天和大家見面。

噢對了，你不用 Apple Pencil 其實也能在 iPad 上寫下公式，甚至還能體驗到 Apple Pencil Pro 模擬的數位投影。

本文來自微信公眾號：不客觀實驗室（ID：gh_719281df296b），作者：唐健博

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