Please Apple, don’t kill PCalc’s widget!

I returned home this evening, away from the cold weather outside, glad to finally let my bones absorb some warmth. Having a few minutes to spare before dinner, I started browsing my Twitter timeline and saw something extremely sad—my heart goes out to James Thomson. He must be truly crestfallen.

Apple has told me that Notification Center widgets on iOS cannot perform any calculations, and the current PCalc widget must be removed.

— James Thomson (@jamesthomson) October 29, 2014

James was nice enough to include me in the beta, hence I had the chance to use both PCalc during the betas, testing his new features. I watched him toil throughout this whole process, most probably sacrificing a lot of his private life to get everything ready and be there on day one. I reviewed PCalc for both iOS and OS X and even though I was a bit late with them and could probably have written many more words on the subject, the fact of the matter is that I use the widget on my iPhone on a daily basis. I bought both versions with my own money—they’re simply worth it. I enjoy supporting indie developers, hoping that my little part will help them create more great software in the future.

Needless to say, this is extremely disappointing news, and I am very sorry for all PCalc users, including me, who love the feature.

— James Thomson (@jamesthomson) October 29, 2014

While I understand why Apple is reversing their decisions in some matters, I cannot fathom why they would choose to do this, especially since Apple’s own calculator is available in widget form. This can have dire consequences to James’s own users, many of which bought PCalc because of the widget and its ability to sync with the app itself. Once the offending code is removed, I am pretty sure many people will go on a 1-star-review-spree, blaming James for the change.

And yes, Apple is currently featuring PCalc in the “Great apps for iOS 8” section, under Notification Center widgets.

— James Thomson (@jamesthomson) October 29, 2014

Please Apple, please reconsider your decision.