Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think every major OS ships with some sort of calculator. The problem is discoverability. If you're in the middle of browsing, it's quite a bit of effort to say "oh that's right I have a calculator on here let me just find it in the start menu/Applications folder" as opposed to it just being there in the same app you're already using. Widgets would be a potential solution but they keep being tried and abandoned soon…
> Widgets would be a potential solution but they keep being tried and abandoned soon after in desktop OSes. There's still a calculator widget for the MacOS notification center. It's accessed in any app through a trackpad gesture or by clicking on the date/time in the menu bar.
The fact that it seems to be similar enough to the iOS implementation of them gives me hope, but only barely.
You also need to know the feature exists (they had notifications before widgets, people might not know it was updated to support them), that there exists a calculator widget, and to add it before you need to use it. That's the same discoverabiloty problem, with the added wrinkle that functionality changed in Monterey.