Apple has a reputation for doing a lot of things right, but it also pays very well for it. After all, MacBook, iPhone and iPad, to name just a few products from the most valuable company in the world, are considered to be particularly user-friendly, top-quality and also durable.
The fact that even the brand with the bitten apple as a logo can sometimes be wrong is shown, for example, by the so-called butterfly keyboard, which has been equipped with MacBooks since 2016. It is deliberately flat, but also sensitive to dust and therefore particularly vulnerable. But there are a whole host of other Apple flops, such as the AirPower charging mat. It was announced in 2017 but had to be officially buried in 2019. It was noticed that the new AirPods 2 were practically roasted on the charging mat.
So far so poorly developed. But it becomes almost absurd if you sometimes prefer to put something aside from the start. This actually follows a certain logic: what is not there cannot ultimately break.
The iPad lacks self-evident basics
iPad users still have to put up with the fact that their tablet lacks two basics that are actually taken for granted: the pocket calculator and the weather app. The iPad has now been around for twelve years. Apple’s software experts obviously haven’t been able to develop these apps for the successful tablet for just as long. The rumored explanations for this rather embarrassing failure don’t cast a very good light on the work processes at Apple.
Shortly before the presentation of the first iPad, in 2010, the overpowering Steve Jobs is said to have personally expressed his displeasure with the planned pocket calculator app. The software engineers had simply skipped the development and instead preferred to fall back on the version that the iPhone has. A no-go for Jobs, since the significantly larger display of the iPad could have offered the designers significantly more options. In any case, the first-generation iPad came onto the market without a calculator app.
Why hasn’t this changed to this day? In addition, in 2020 Apple’s boss for software issues, Craig Federighi, in one YouTube exclusive interview voiced with popular vlogger Marques Brownlee (“MKBHD”). The channel, which has more than 15 million subscribers, specializes in modern communication, entertainment and mobility electronics from smartphones and game consoles to electric cars. Brownlee likes to ask uncomfortable questions. Questions that, in this case, should lead to a seemingly bizarre answer.
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So “simple” that it’s embarrassing
“There are some things we haven’t done because we want to do something really great in this area,” Federighi replied at the time. You don’t want to tackle a calculator app until you can do it really well. “And honestly, we just haven’t gotten around to making it great,” confessed the software expert.
Aha. At Apple, iPhones, MacBooks, iPads, iMacs, etc. are developed and perfected from year to year. However, it does not appear to be able to design two simple apps over a period of twelve years. If it wasn’t so sad, you could laugh. And because Brownlee was just getting going, he also asked Federighi about the weather app. This is also not available for the iPad. Once again, the Apple man’s explanation followed the strange logic he had already used for the lack of the calculator app. Federighi was now arguing along the lines of Jobs when he said that they didn’t just want to take over the iPhone app. That is “too easy”. Instead, the first thing to be clarified is what a weather app should look like in order to do justice to the iPad.
The fact that this question has obviously still not been answered after twelve years and that iPad users still have to switch to third-party apps may not be a disaster for Apple, but it is definitely embarrassing. So embarrassing that in the afterlife Steve Jobs would probably have a veritable tantrum again and again with every further iPad presentation.