Pigs must be flying and hell has frozen over because the official Apple Calculator application is headed for iPad. It’s a feature missing from the tablet since its launch in 2010 but iPadOS 18 will include one.
It goes beyond simply an expanded version of the iPhone app. Apple built in a Math Notes calculator that allows users to write equations with a stylus and have the iPad solve them.
Calculator app for iPad at long last
Steve Jobs nixed the calculator from Apple’s original tablet because it was lame — nothing more than the iPhone app awkwardly blown up to iPad size. But that was more than a decade ago, and tablet users have asked for a Calculator app year after year and always been disappointed. That has now changed.
The application has the basic features one would expect: a numberpad combined with the usual buttons for a wide range of mathematical operations. Users can switch between a basic and scientific calculator. But that’s only the start for iPad users.
Image: Apple
It’s a Math Notes calculator for iPad
“An all-new Math Notes calculator allows users to type or write out mathematical expressions and see them instantly solved in their own handwriting,” says Apple.
The feature is designed to deal with the difficulty of entering complex operations into a standard calculator. With the new iPad version, someone can use a stylus to write all the numerators and denominators and parenthesis they need and nevertheless have the computer solve it.
Math Notes even supports variables. The user can enter values into these and see how they change the results of a mathematical expression. What’s more, it can generate graphs from formulas.
Coming this autumn
The redesigned Calculator app will reach iPad when iPadOS 18 launches this autumn — probably in September. iPhone users should get the more basic version at the same time, in iOS 18.
Anyone feeling impatient can sign up for the Apple Beta Software program. It’s free, but also guarantees buggy software.
