Apple's Craig Federighi explains why there's no native Calculator and Weather app for iPad

Federighi said that there are certain things that Apple has not yet done because whenever it happens, it should be distinctive and ‘great in that space’.

Craig Federighi. (MKBHD/YouTube)

Apple's senior vice president of everything software, Craig Federighi was the star of this year's WWDC 2020 keynote presentation (like every other year). He talked about a lot of things including the upcoming iOS 14, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and iPadOS updates. However, after the presentation, he gave some more information, answering some fan questions asked by popular YouTuber MKBHD or Marques Brownlee.

And one such question was that why doesn't Apple have a native calculator and messaging app on iPads?. These are definitely not difficult to make for a company like Apple and it already has these apps in iOS and macOS. So what's stopping them to make these two apps for iPadOS?

Answering to this, Federighi said that there are certain things that Apple has not yet done because whenever it happens, it should be distinctive and ‘great in that space'. “I mean it's obviously easy to create a calculator app,” said Federighi, but creating one that feels like ‘Wow, this is the greatest iPad calculator app' is what the firm will aim to achieve whenever it does so. “That day may come,” he added.

As for the Weather app, Federighi said that it will be very easy for them to scale up the current iOS Weather app for the iPads but that's something Apple is not looking at. The company aims to make a Weather app that makes use of the large screen iPad in every possible way.

The senior vice president of software engineering, in the podcast, also talked about how the production team ‘moved mountains' to put together the online-only WWDC keynote and that Apple was really happy with it. He did say that Apple can definitely apply some lessons learned here, indicating that it could go for online-only events in future if required.

However, later in the podcast, Federighi talked about the new widgets that are introduced for home screen in iOS 14. Although not mentioned during the presentation, Federighi said that Apple's approach towards widgets may change and that these might not be limited to the homescreen.

When asked if the macOS Big Sur is slowly becoming iOS-like, Federighi confirmed that it won't be the case “I feel that after you use the UI for [a while], it feels natural and fresh and clearly, distinctly Mac,” he said. “I love it.”