Developer James Thomson of popular calculator app PCalc announced today via his Twitter account that Apple is forcing him to remove the app’s Today Widget due to a restriction that iOS widgets “cannot perform any calculations.”
Apple’s new Today Widgets feature in iOS 8, which allows developers to build functions into the system-wide Notification Center, does have some limitations that Apple outlines in developer documentation. For example, Apple encourages developers not to use Today Widgets for multistep tasks: “If you want to create an app extension that enables a multistep task or helps users perform a lengthy task, such as uploading or downloading content, the Today extension point is not the right choice.” There doesn’t, however, appear to be specific references to apps that perform calculations in Apple’s developer guidelines.
It isn’t the first time Apple has asked developers to remove widget functionality that interferes with its vision of the Notification Center feature.
The PCalc app remains on the App Store, but its developer said today that Apple has asked that the current PCalc widget be removed. [tweet https://twitter.com/jamesthomson/status/527498251176796160]
