Good riddance, this button was bad UI - you shouldn't be able to easily lose user input unless you have just as easy of a way to undo it.
Though the new "hold to delete" approach doesn't help with the latter, so the stock calculator is still bad
> This was not the time for me to readjust my calculator’s input one digit at a time. I needed to zero that thang—but I couldn’t.
Of course you could have just hold the backspace button to achieve just that. How could a journalist waste so many words describing trivial app use experience, delving into history and all that, but fail a quick web search that would lead to this revelation?
> I worry that the calculator, like many other smartphone apps, is not evolving so much as being fiddled with
If only you could download another evolving calculator app for that....
Thank you. I was struggling doing some basic calculations on the iPhone calculator and it was the uncanny valley of calculators. This explains it. The missing C was noted but I assumed it was user error that I had put it into some mode without one.
> I worry that the calculator we’ve known and loved is not long for this Earth. This month, when I upgraded my iPhone to the latest operating system, iOS 18, it came with a refreshed Calculator app. The update offered some improvements! I appreciated the vertical orientation of its scientific mode, because turning your phone sideways is so 2009; the continuing display of each operation (e.g., 217 ÷ 4 + 8) on the screen until I asked for the result; the unit-conversion mode, because I will never know what a centimeter is. But there also was a startling omission: The calculator’s “C” button—the one that clears input—was gone. The “C” itself had been cleared.
Good riddance, this button was bad UI - you shouldn't be able to easily lose user input unless you have just as easy of a way to undo it. Though the new "hold to delete" approach doesn't help with the latter, so the stock calculator is still bad
> This was not the time for me to readjust my calculator’s input one digit at a time. I needed to zero that thang—but I couldn’t.
Of course you could have just hold the backspace button to achieve just that. How could a journalist waste so many words describing trivial app use experience, delving into history and all that, but fail a quick web search that would lead to this revelation?
> I worry that the calculator, like many other smartphone apps, is not evolving so much as being fiddled with
If only you could download another evolving calculator app for that....
Thank you. I was struggling doing some basic calculations on the iPhone calculator and it was the uncanny valley of calculators. This explains it. The missing C was noted but I assumed it was user error that I had put it into some mode without one.
> I worry that the calculator we’ve known and loved is not long for this Earth. This month, when I upgraded my iPhone to the latest operating system, iOS 18, it came with a refreshed Calculator app. The update offered some improvements! I appreciated the vertical orientation of its scientific mode, because turning your phone sideways is so 2009; the continuing display of each operation (e.g., 217 ÷ 4 + 8) on the screen until I asked for the result; the unit-conversion mode, because I will never know what a centimeter is. But there also was a startling omission: The calculator’s “C” button—the one that clears input—was gone. The “C” itself had been cleared.
The “C” functionality seems to now be mapped to long press on backspace.
Doesn't seem like they're trying to win awards for usability, does it? :(
"Think differently".
Hold it differently.
https://archive.is/SDJvn
https://archive.today/SDJvn