Calcbot is a universal calculator application for iPad and iPhone. It is a basic scientific calculator but is designed well with big buttons and tape. For this review, we will be focusing on the iPad version.

In landscape, you will find the calculator on the left and tape on the right. The calculator has two pages of buttons which keeps them nice and big. Just swipe the calculator to the left to bring the next page of functions. The first page is primarily numbers and basic operators as well as power and root functions. The second page contains a more functions such at the specific powers of 2 and 3, square root, factorial, log, natural logarithm, exponential, and trigonometric functions. Tapping the shift key (up arrow) will change the trigonometric functions to their inverses. Calcbot lets you chose between radians and degrees as well. The second page does not include an equal sign. This is annoying because a calculation does not appear on the tape until the equal sign is tapped.

If you want to re-enter a calculation from the tape, just tap the desired calculation and a menu pops up to use result, use expression, copy, send in email, or delete. You can also swipe to delete any expression. To email or clear the entire tape, tap the wheel in the upper right hand corner. If you’re not interested in seeing the tape, rotate to portrait mode to view only the calculator.

Calcbot is an excellent little calculator app that looks and works great. There is nothing fancy about it, but that’s part of it’s appeal. Calcbot is strait-forward and to the point which makes it easy and intuitive to use. Simply put, Calcbot is another visually appealing and terrifically designed app by Tapbots.

Screenshots after the break!

[$0.99 - iTunes link]

Pros

• Simple and effective calculator
• Email and access calculations from tape
• Swipe to access more functions. This keeps the calculator buttons nice and big.

Cons

• Must hit equal sign for calculation to appear on tape. It would be nice to have equal sign available on both screens.

Calcbot for iPad (and iPhone) – app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Unlike the iPhone 3GS, the iPad doesn’t have built-in stocks, weather, voice memo, clock, calculator, or compass apps. It does, however, have the brand new iPad App Store, and yeah… there are apps for all that!

Check out our picks after the break!

Bloomberg for iPad [Free - iTunes link] offers not just stocks but news, company info, price charts, trends, analysis and… you get the idea. It could just be information overload on a 9.7″ screen, but that’s likely just what you stockies want!

Weather Channel Max [Free - iTunes link] costs nothing (thanks to Toyota) but packs in the weathery-goodness. Full screen, customizable maps, in-motion radar, local, regional, and national video, and more make it not so much of a replacement as a escalation.

Voice memos for iPad [Free - iTunes link] is the “I can’t believe it’s not butter” of replacement apps. It looks similar to Apple’s iPhone Voice Memo app, but it’s scaled up to iPad size. Unlimited recording, tagging, pause, levels, timer, and email options make it a great fill in option.

Clock… We haven’t found a good replacement for Clock yet. If you know of one that matches the functionality and the grace of the iPhone Clock app, let us know in the comments. And developers — make a good one, with a great icon. Seriously.

PCalc Lite [Free - iTunes] or PCalc [$9.99 - iTunes link] make the iPhone calculator look anemic by comparison. It includes an optional RPN mode, multiple undo and redo, unit conversions and constants, a couple of themes, and much more in the paid version.

Compass HD + Vector Magnetometer / Gravitometer [Free for now - iTunes link] is an app that, frankly, we may not be smart enough to properly describe. It has absolute mode, north mode, declination mode, and relative modes, and a bunch of different display modes for acceleration visualization. Get it while it’s free!

So there you have it, App Store to the rescue! Did we miss any (other than clocks!)? Are there alternatives your like better? Let us know in the comments!

No stocks, weather, voice memos, clock, calculator, or compass on iPad? App Store to the rescue! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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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?

DF: iPad Stocks, Calculator, Weather, Clock, Voice Memo Apps Scrapped by Steve Jobs is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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