Why are there no Clock, Calculator, Voice Memo, Weather, or Stocks apps on the iPad?
Daring Fireball's John Gruber suggests that bigger, iPad versions of the built-in iPhone Stocks, Calculator, Weather, Clock and Voice Memo were scrapped by Steve Jobs:
It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad. It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or at least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated. So they were scrapped by you-know-who.
Gruber was responding to theories that these apps would instead be offered as App Store downloads, or could be part of some secret widget dashboard implementation. In other words, that it's a design issue, not a technical issue.
However, new UI that would make the iPad an amazing bedside clock (how's that for a Lock Screen), or show Stocks with a variety of graphs and related news and data, or weather for several days and cities at once, certainly seems possible for Apple's UI wizards. Perhaps they simply lacked time to re-do the apps for the already extended April 3 release date?
Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps. At least that’s the story I’ve heard from a few well-informed little birdies.
Speaking of which, any little birdies hear anything about an iPhone 4.0 sneak preview event yet? Or is everyone just focused on getting the iPad out right now?
Source: Daring Fireball
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