“With the iPhone v2.1 software out of the door, Apple is hard at work on v2.2. From this first glimpse it looks like Apple, now the major bugs have been squashed, is adding some new features,” Charlie Sorrel writes for Wired.
“Of course, there’s still no mention of Copy and Paste, a seemingly ridiculous omission from such a powerful device. But I have a theory: Apple won’t ever put it in, at least not in the form we currently know,” Sorrel writes. “The iPhone model is quite different from that of a proper computer. In a Mac or PC, you use the operating system to act on files, be they pictures, emails or text documents”
“The iPhone works more like iTunes, where each application takes care of its own files and what you can do with them… It’s possible that Apple is taking so long to implement copy and paste not because it is difficult, but because Apple is reinventing it,” Sorrel writes. “Imagine a system-wide menu added to all applications which, instead of shuffling items off to a clipboard, lists all the places you can send that file (or text string). This would be like the existing ‘Open with’ option available in the Mac’s right-click menu — each application effectively reports to the OS exactly what kind of files it can handle and the OS remembers this.”
Sorrel writes, “Technically, this still uses a ‘clipboard’ stack to store items temporarily, but the user experience changes to fit the iPhone’s one-open-app-at-a-time paradigm.”
More in the full article – recommended – here.
@ PC Apologist: I agree competely: People ask “A $500 phone can’t send/recieve pictures messages?” This is F**King RIDICULOUS! AND WHY DA HELL DOES APPLE NEED TO REINVENT COPY & PASTE? Just stick with what works and provide the option. Why can’t code be added to allow forwarding of text messages? WHY DA HELL WON’T MDN, WALT MOSSBERG, BUSINESS WEEK, MAC WORLD, PC WORLD, ECT – ASK STEVE JOBS WHAT’S DA HOLD UP WITH MMS, COPY & PASTE, SMS FORWARDING???? Stop asking those stupid ass questions about Beatles on itunes (who give’s a F**K!) and ask REAL Questions that DESERVE REAL ANSWERS!
Is the reason why there is no copy-paste and MMS that, for security and stability here, non-phone applications on the iPhone OS are not allowed to run in the background, as they do on other cell phone operating systems (similar to the pre-multitasking MacOSD) ? If so, it’s hard to see how the “send-to” process would get around this. The iPhone owner would still have to open and close applications to make the copy & paste work.
EVERYONE MMS BLOWS NUTS!!!! Quit bitching about not being able to see a fuzzy picture of your friend’s hairy ass. if you really need to send a picture MMS use email, yes you can MMS through email. it’s a dying service, think about we send high quality photos through mobileme, email, twitter, what ever other blog sites directly. Much better IMO. This what everyone should yell at, VIDEO, i am sure in Gen3 iPhone it will be there but $hit, imagine if we could load directly to YouTube super funny emabarassing moments of our friends or enemies. thats whats apple upto, and i would appreciate Copy/paste, been able to live without at this point, so i’ll just be happy when it does
Copy & Paste (tired)
Forward text message via email or to another sms
Forward ical item
Forward contact
Video
Forward a map and or directions
mike honcho is the reason Apple doesn’t answer our calls. The Reality Distortion Field army is right there on the front lines ready to excuse every boneheaded move they make.
Please mike honcho, tell us how we don’t need video recording.
I own an iPhone and I say, “Who needs copy and paste on an iPhone?” What will you paste?, a simple URL?, an e-mail address?? Unless you have document creation capabilities, copy/paste functionality is useless.
Now if we can create MS Word, or Text Documents on the iPhone, then that’s another story. I kow I won’t be doing any major document creation without a keyboard.
One developer has already thoughtfully addressed this with an OpenSource initiative at http://www.openclip.org
Maybe not as useful as an inbuilt part of the iPhone OS, but then again perhaps better as each app developer then performs the Cut-and-Paste operations that would be appropriate for that app.
It’s certainly a good start.
I said something like this on these message boards several months ago.
My thoughts at the time were more of a “pull” rather than a “push” type operation, but push may make more sense. Data detectors in desktop Mail.app are certainly wonderful but could be made into even more….
Either approach is better than the push+pull+lots of manual reformatting required with copy and paste.
“Who needs copy and paste on an iPhone?” What will you paste?,”
When your iPhone corporate email locks up and you have a message in the outbox that won’t go, what you want to do is copy and paste it’s contents somewhere else so that when you do as the apple tech asks and delete it, that you don’t have to re-type it again on that pathetic slow touchscreen keyboard.
Of course when you finally delete the message, you find it doesn’t fix the problem anyway, so have to delete your entire mail account and re-add it on the phone to get it working again. meanwhile because it doesn’t believe much in multitasking, none of your alarms go off.
Yes, I have 2.1 software. So you’re right. Apple would be best working on stability rather than cut and paste since stable, correctly functioning iPhone software would have eliminated the only need I’ve had for cut and paste so far.
Also add background downloading to Safari so you can go do something else on the phone while waiting for a slow page download. Heck, just do it right and allow any application to run in the background while performing a long task rather than require the poor schlub iPhone owner to sit there and wait for it to complete.
Apple’s created the world’s only non multitasking Unix operating system. Someone should tell Steve that that’s not an innovation the world needs.
The MMS issue is the only reason I want cut and paste. When you get the text about a MMS message waiting at mms.att.com, it would be great to be able to cut and paste either the login or the password. Or, I don’t know, go ahead and have MMS.
re: Mike Honcho – maybe your friends are rocking freebie cell phones from 2004, but mine are actually sending decent photos and audio. Sure, it is fun to have to tell everyone to send to my email address, but it would be more fun to just look at the picture. Also, the workaround to seen MMS through email has worked about 20% of the time.
@all the whiners…
MMS messages are routed through an email server; therefore, you can easily send and receive MMS messages to and from your friends and family if you know the appropriate domain. For instance, the domain for Verizon is vzwpix.com; thus, the email address to which you would send a picture to a Verizon customer is their phone number @vzwpix.com (2025551212@vzwpix.com). Your friends and family can send their MMS to your standard email address. It’s quite simple, and a workaround I’ve been using for over a year now; just add the additional address to their contact info, and vice versa.
To all the commentators who work at RIM, Nokia, Motorola, and all these other wannabe phone companies… GET ANOTHER JOB QUICK!
You may not believe the following statement but it is true: Apple will completely take over the entire cell phone market.
Yes you think I am exaggerating or being dramatic but just you wait.
I am sure lots of people reading this know exactly what I am talking about.
“Apple’s created the world’s only non multitasking Unix operating system. Someone should tell Steve that that’s not an innovation the world needs.”
Another Windows or RIM paid shill.
That statement is as untrue as saying “Windows only runs DOS software” or “BlackBerries cannot send email to Gmail.”
“The fact that every other phone has both suggests that it’s a valued feature. Also, the number of times a day I get the dreaded MMS URL text message tells me VERY clearly how many people are using MMS.”
Actually, how about “The fact that every other phone has both suggests that those phone vendors are clueless about what’s important and what’s not.”
NUMBERS DO NOT LIE. iPHONE IS TAKING OVER THE MARKET.
Stop working on crap. Get another job.
Nokia is coming out with its “iPhone Killer” next week. Ooooo. Yawn.
It is funny, except that I know real people are working on those products and they need to earn money for their families. So, again, my advice: GET ANOTHER JOB SOON!!!
Hows about just tell your friends to GET WITH THE PROGRAM and buy iPhones??!!!
I am having ZERO problems and LOADS OF FUN sending and receiving high-resolution photos from my iPhone friends (almost all of them are on iPhones, either first-gen or 3G version) and we just email photos to each other.
What? Your phone can’t do email?!
What kind of modern cell phone is that?!!
“What about forwarding SMS messages … the cheapest of cell phones do this!!!!”
You said it. Cheap cell phones.
Real phones do email in realtime.
I even send and receive my current position with friends, so they can use their iPhone 3G to meet up with me. No GPS on your phone??? Boo hoo!!!!!!!!
SMS sucks. And as long as companies charge extra for stupid “texting” it will always suck. The only reason people “text” instead of emailing is because their earlier POS phones couldn’t handle email but could send a few bytes in the “check” contact interval.
I submit that “texting” is like using gopher versus emailing being like graphical web browsing — OUT OF DATE.