After 15 years of lacking a calculator, the iPad finally got one, apparently so that Apple could flog its expensive pen device, which works with it.

Apple's Calculator app has been conspicuously absent from the iPad since its launch 14 years ago.  It was unclear if Steve Jobs thought that Apple fanboys did not need to add stuff up or if Apple could not design one.

A new Calculator app will be available for the iPad with iPadOS 18 this autumn. This app introduces an expanded Calculator that takes up the iPad's screen and features unique integrations with the Apple Pencil.

This left the Apple Marketing team with a challenge. After all, a calculator is not rocket science, and the technology has been around since the 1940s.

Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, took a stab at the iPad by claiming that the calculator made it more powerful and intelligent than ever—which it doesn’t.

To be fair Apple’s calculator lets users write mathematical expressions with an Apple Pencil and see them solved as soon as they write an equal (=) sign in their handwriting. Users can assign values to variables, insert graphs from equations, and use multiple equations on a single graph.  For a maths person, this is pretty cool. But as far as a calculator is concerned this is just pimped tech and not that difficult to do – in fact it was even suggested a decade ago in the Big Bang Theory were it was suggested only about 20 people would be interested.

The iPad calculator displays complete expressions before solving, shows calculator history, and provides quick unit conversions for weight, length, currencies, and more.  

While Apple launched new iPad models in May, it announced new iOS, iPadOS, VisionOS, and MacOS updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier today. The built-in Calculator app will be available for all iPad models compatible with iPadOS 18.

The Tame Apple Press is left scratching its head as to why Jobs’ Mob never had a built-in Calculator app on the iPad all these years had has been writing excuses.

“speculation has attributed the reasons to market positioning, encouraging third-party development, and -- maybe most credibly -- design philosophy.”

However, a Reddit eight years ago blamed the lack of an iPad Calculator app on Steve Jobs:

"A month before the release, Steve Jobs calls Scott Forstall into his office and asks, "Where is the new design for the Calculator? This looks awful."

He said,"What new design?" This is what we are shipping with.

Steve said, "No, pull it we can't ship that." Scott fought for it to stay in, but he knew he had to get their UI team involved to design a new look for the calculator. However, there was no way they could do it in that short time frame, so they just scrapped it."

The same user finished his story by saying that the Calculator app has remained a low priority at Apple ever since St Steve cursed it.