Filed under: Hardware, Software, App Store, iPad
iPad will lack some standard iPhone apps at launch
Wired's Brian X. Chen noticed that Apple's iPad press release touts "12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad." Take a look at the screenshot at right and you'll see twelve apps: Videos, iPod, Maps, Photos, Mail, Safari, App Store, iTunes, YouTube, Contacts, Calendar and Notes. That means a few apps that ship with the iPhone -- Stocks, Calculator, Clock, Weather and Voice Memos -- are missing. Thus, the mystery begins. Where are The Final Five? Chen suggests that they'll be released as free apps in the App Store. John Gruber believes that design problems caused the team (specifically, Steve Jobs) to withhold the apps. I agree with John and Brian.
Consider the calculator app. It looks great on the iPhone, as the iPhone is about the size of a pocket calculator. If it were simply "blown up" to accommodate the iPad's screen, it would resemble one of those dollar store calculators with the enormous buttons for older folks. Definitely not what Apple is after. Also, the press release says, "... designed especially for the iPad" (emphasis mine). The five missing apps haven't yet received that loving attention, at least to Steve's satisfaction.
As for getting them on the iPad, I bet they'll be a part of the next OS release and in the App Store from then on. That way, Apple won't be tied to the OS whenever they want to update those apps, and they'll have time between now and then to get them just right.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
cjschrissouth said 1:17PM on 3-09-2010
Maybe they're on the other page.
Maybe they are making them widgets for the home screen? That sounds plausible for calendar, clock, weather and stocks but voice memos would be quite stupid on the iPad...who would cart around that for voice recording when an iphone is sufficiant.
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Todd Sieling said 2:01PM on 3-09-2010
> voice memos would be quite stupid on the iPad...who would cart around that for voice recording when an iphone is sufficiant.
Who would ever think that someone would cart around an iphone or ipad just for voice memos?
L3 said 1:20PM on 3-09-2010
Phone app would resemble,
"JITTERBUG!"
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drejewelers said 1:23PM on 3-09-2010
Why did apple put a video app when we use the iPod app to watch our movies, videos.
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willyu34 said 1:26PM on 3-09-2010
speaking of the video app... I am hoping it'll support more codec then iphone/ipod touch. I can understand those device only have limited processing power so needs more restricted video formats, but iPad should have less restrictions.
macduke said 1:34PM on 3-09-2010
For the same reason that iPod Touch 1.0 received the video app--to take up screen space. Back then the iPod Touch didn't have extra apps either. Sparse screen = make extra icons for no reason. This kind of pisses me off. Hopefully 4.0 will have the widget mode. The iPad won't even have a calculator? For real? This is why you need widgets. They can float over the window and then fly out when you're done. They don't need to be huge.
willyu34 said 1:24PM on 3-09-2010
But I LOVE those novelty 11x7 calculators!!
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Vcize said 1:24PM on 3-09-2010
The final five are actually the parents of all the other apps, but the other apps got jealous of the final five's love for 3rd party apps and made them think that they are in fact, 3rd party apps themselves and forced them to live among them and see how inferior they are.
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Mark E. DeSade said 1:25PM on 3-09-2010
Clearly the Final Five are just waiting to hear All Along the Watchtower before discovering their true identities. So say we all.
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Maccadude33 said 9:00PM on 3-09-2010
Great reference my friend. :)
Leo M. said 1:32PM on 3-09-2010
The calculator could be redesigned to be an amazing graphing/scientific calculator. Just think about how it would be able to visualize everything next to a calculator that doesn't fill the entire screen.
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SIP said 6:29PM on 3-09-2010
The iPhone Calculator.app already does this -- just turn it 90° into landscape mode and see a Scientific Calculator.
Brandon said 1:35PM on 3-09-2010
I'm expecting a widget dashboard to move these apps to......This would also explain the mysterious blank key on the iPad Keyboard Dock.
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mrtotes said 6:58AM on 3-11-2010
+1
These apps lend themselves to being widgets that can run concurrently with other apps. Not full multi-tasking but a step in that direction.
LaughingMan said 1:39PM on 3-09-2010
I am with John Gruber on this one. These most basic of apps work fine on the iPhone and iPod touch because they comfortably fill the whole onscreen UI, but it's difficult to imagine a 1024 x 768 FULLSCREEN clock or stock ticker application.
To me, this points to a very serious flaw of Apple's decision to simply extend the iPhone OS as is to a bigger 1024 x 768 screen of the iPad.
The iPhone OS only supports a single running application that must fill the whole screen. On a small screen of the iPod touch or iPhone, widget applications make sense to fill the screen, but not on the iPad.
By choosing the iPhone OS, they've pretty much abandoned the windowed user interface metaphor that Apple pioneered with the Mac way back in the 80s, and gone back to a metaphor where every app must fill the whole screen corner to corner. If you're working on a spreadsheet, a calculator can't be quickly brought to the front and layered on top of your spreadsheet app to help you work.
Clearly Apple has recognized this as an issue... this is why they'd rather have nothing at all there for Clock, Weather, Stocks, etc than to be embarrassed by the result...
But this leads to another question. How will Apple deal with the potential iPad app developers that will want to develop similar "widget" type applications that will be nonoptimal in a 1024 x 768 environment too?
Will we have a wave of ugly pixelated 3rd party applications with sparse user interfaces that don't completely use the iPad's screen real estate?
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Sean Burgess said 1:43PM on 3-09-2010
I think leaving those five off would be a smart move if it was done intentionally. Apple might have realized that those are five apps that people tend to replace quickly with more capable versions anyway and chose not to stick us with them. It's especially annoying to me that I can't delete the Stocks application from my phone, because I never use it.
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Chris said 4:35PM on 3-09-2010
The calendar app features at 1:27 in the original iPad video on the Apple website. Surely it must be on the device as standard?
Chris said 4:37PM on 3-09-2010
I entirely agree regarding the Stocks and Weather apps, but the calendar app is an absolute essential for me.
johnmc said 2:53PM on 3-09-2010
Oh no! Whatever will we do without the stocks application?
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KiltedTim said 3:21PM on 3-09-2010
Um, just why does everyone assume that these won't be included with the iPad in some way? It was obvious that what Steve demoed was not complete. Just because you haven't seen a picture of it in a video or a mention of it on the web site yet, doesn't mean it won't be there.
I'm quite certain there are features which won't be announced at least until Friday when pre-orders begin.
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