Bob Cringely writes for I, Cringely, “A good friend of mine pointed out the money phrase from Steve Jobs at this week’s iPad 2 introduction: ‘This is worth repeating. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough. It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive.'”
“But then we come to this very rational critique of the iPad 2 from a blogger named Allahpundit who points out that despite the iPad 2 being thinner and faster and just as cheap as the original iPad with two new cameras to boot, it is still a pain in the ass to cut and paste text with one,” Cringely writes. “Why, given Steve Jobs’s boast that these are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, would he build a device that is in this one important area is clearly harder to use than even a Windows PC?”
Cringely writes, “Steve is, well, a little bit of a hypocrite here…. For all Steve’s bold talk, Apple still relies on Mac sales for a quarter of its revenue — about $15 billion per year — which is a lot of revenue, so they have deliberately kept some things like production cutting and pasting text easier to do on a Mac than on an iPad 2.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This article was created on an iPad running iOS 4.2.1. Therefore, Cringely’s excerpts, his article’s URL, Allahpundit’s URL, multiple code snippets, the blurb, and many pre-built items were, of course, copied and pasted using the functions built into iOS 4.2.1. So, obviously, it can be done and we’re pretty good at it, having had a good amount of practice. It takes us about 10% more time to lay out a MacDailyNews post on an iPad as it does a Mac. (We’ve tested and timed ourselves rather extensively using various devices).
Apple’s iOS 4 cut, copy, and paste functions are unmatched by any touch-controlled device. It’s not even close.
That said, the devices we choose to use for production cutting and pasting are, in order of preference:
1. Mac with a Magic Mouse
2. Mac with a trackpad
3. iPad
4. iPhone or iPod touch (limited screen size)
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
What part of “post-PC” don’t they get. iPads are not really meant to copy and paste. You need a PC if you want to really do that sort of work. First and foremost, “post-PC” is about consumption devices. Frustration will occur if you try to force something to do what it wasn’t built to do.
Allahpundit is an in-the-closet RINO political hack who wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground if it wasn’t for his peculiar attraction for ass.
Ignore anything he says.
lets face it, cut, copy and paste is somewhat harder on the iPad than on the mac. What I really have a problem with is scrolling text when entering in a text box like this one, and you enter more text than fits. I miss the cursor keys.
I think copy and paste does need some work, it isn’t the easiest thing to use but hypocrite? Apple’s implementation of copy and paste is the best thing out there. There are no features in any operating system that don’t need to be improved, it’s always a work in progress, IE why there are new versions every year. Hypocrite, I don’t think so.
Cringely is an idiot. My mom’s a computerphobe and she copies and pastes all the time on iPhone, hardly ever on the Mac. Why? Because the Mac hides the feature. She doesn’t use keyboard shortcuts. She has to go to the edit menu to copy/paste. On iPhone, if she selects text the copy/paste menu is right there above her selection. Much EASIER!
Rational? it seems more like a logical fallacy to me.
The goal is to make iPad easier to use than a PC overall.
The fact that a single function has not met that goal does not a) mean Apple is not trying to accomplish that and b) that Jobs is a hypocrite.
This “Cringely” – a fake name of course, and different guys over the years – is a pompous douchbag. why does MDN bother to link to anything he ever posts. it’s garbage.
“This article was created on an iPad running iOS 4.2.1”
Just as I’ve long suspected. MDN is produced from a remote tropical island in the Pacific Ocean using nothing more than an iPad and a stolen WiFi connection.
What everyone seems to be unaware of is the patent issue with “copy and paste”.
I remember reading, at the time that Apple was being raked over the coals for iOS’s lack of copy and paste, that the issue was one of avoiding patent violations. This is why Apple had to invent their own implementation of copy and paste. This is also the reason Windows Phone was released without copy and paste. Microsoft had to work on inventing their own implementation.
Does anyone remember this? I tried to find the original article from a couple of years ago, but was unable to locate the site.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that cut and paste is hard on IOS devices. How long has the Mac had cut and paste compared to IOS? The iPad is a completely different way of computing. It’s NEW and still being perfected. Sometimes certain computing tasks that we all take for granted on our regular computers take longer to polish on a new computing paradigm. Sheesh!
If you could have it all, what would be left.
It’s not harder to cut and paste, it’s just different. If touch screens had been invented prior to keyboards and mice, then we would think it very strange (and more difficult) to cut and paste via a mouse and keyboard:
On OS X:
1. Use mouse to highlight area to be cut (click and drag).
2. Leave mouse and move to keyboard to use two-key combination to cut.
3. Alternatively, move mouse to Edit menu, click, pull down to “Cut”, click.
4. Move mouse to area to paste text, click to insert cursor.
5. Leave mouse and move to keyboard to use different two-key combination to paste.
6. Alternatively, move mouse to Edit menu, click, pull down to “Paste”, click.
On iOS:
1. Tap and hold on word to cut/copied.
2. If multiple words to be cut/copied, drag button to highlight text to be cut/copied.
3. Tap “Cut” or “Copy”.
4. Tap and hold in spot to paste text.
5. Tap “Paste”.
If you were teaching a person who had never touched a computer in their lives, iOS would be easier, more intuitive, and make more sense.
The difference is most people have spent years using mice and keyboards and have trained themselves to use these tools, so they do so without thinking. iOS and touch screens are new, so they still have to think about how to use features like cut and paste which they take for granted.
You forgot one.
On OS X:
1. Use mouse to highlight area to be copied (click and drag).
2. Right-click and select “Copy” from the conext menu.
3. Move mouse to area to paste text, right-click again.
4. Select “Paste” from the conext menu.
That seems to but what iOS’ copy and paste takes after, actually.
I have 2 Macs, and iPhone and an iPad. I don’t use the iPad for typing text unless I have to. With a stand, a wireless keyboard and a wireless trackpad (or a mouse) it would be fine. For me, the biggest issue is selecting the text I want – it is just too clumsy on the iPad and I don’t have particularly fat fingers. I also find the autocorrection extremely annoying, but I leave it on because I make a great many errors when using the on-screen keyboard to type. My worst issue is missing the space bar and hitting an “m” or an “n” instead – even when I am watching my fingers. I look up and find three words strung together with “m”s and “n”s – removing these is very tricky with a finger! Often I look up to find my text has been replaced with nonsense – autocorrect has replaced my words with something else.
So he is right – it is still much harder to use copy and paste on the iPad. Its MUCH harder on the iPhone and I don’t use that for anything except phone calls and alerts these days.
I don’t see how this will ever get easier using touch on the screen itself. For fine editing a finger is just too big – and obscures what you are trying to edit. Perhaps a cover which doubles as a full-screen touchpad would do the trick – larger editing jobs, like deleting a full paragraph, can be done easily enough with on-screen touch.
WIthout any form of touchpad, even the wireless keyboard doesn’t really help – ergonomically it is very clumsy to have to reach up to the screen to position the cursor for insertion or editing. It makes the process very slow. I have Pages on the iPad, but I never use it. Even typing comments such as this takes me much longer on the iPad and I have found, over the past few months, that I now use my Macbook Pro for nearly all typing, and the iPad for games and reading on the sofa in front of the television. I love it for that – the Macbook is too bulky and gets too hot, and the battery life doesn’t compare…
My next device will be a new Macbook Pro.
The c/c/p on iOS devices can be frustrating sometimes. Try to copy and paste FROM Facebook TO a text message or email sometime. It’s not the worst I have ever seen but it still needs work.
If you use a keyboard on an iPad, you can cmd-c and cmd-v just like on Cringelys PC.
You can tell from the article that he hasn’t tried it himself… What a windbag.
All fanboy rantings aside, Cringely is correct. It is easier to cut-and-past on a computer with a keyboard.
Does this simple fact offend so many of you drooling halfwits that you have to attack the man?
Wow. Thi swebsight is getting worse every day.
I’m pretty sure the offensive(and also insane) part is where Cringley says that Apple has a conspiracy to deliberately make copy & pasting “difficult” on the iPad 2 so they can sell more Macs.
First of all, Robert X. should probably rethink writing while he’s high. Second, the difference betwen copy & paste on iOS and OS X might just have something to do with the fact that iOS was never designed to be used with a mouse, so alot of things are going to just plain work differently than they do on OS X. And there’s really nothing Apple can do about it short of adding some kind of mechanical pointing-and-clicking device and onscreen cursor to the iPad.
I swear. The trolls are getting lousier every day.
Dirk … I am going to type this out S L O W L Y for you, as you are obviously a slow reader … ignorant and unintelligent.
The issue isn’t that cut-and-paste is quicker on a computer with a keyboard, the issue is that “the man” is asserting that “Steve is … a hypocrite here…. For all Steve’s bold talk, Apple still relies on Mac sales for a quarter of its revenue — about $15 billion per year — which is a lot of revenue, so they have deliberately kept some things like production cutting and pasting text easier to do on a Mac than on an iPad 2.”
If you can not figure out that his assertion is so extremely asinine then you’re the drooling halfwit here.
-Wow. (the dumb ass trolls on) Thi swebsight is getting worse every day. (sic)
And I will point out again that Robert X. Cringely aka Mark Stephens is a lying, two faced cheating scumbag. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely
Have a nice day.
“For all Steve’s bold talk, Apple still relies on Mac sales for a quarter of its revenue”
No shit, Sherlock. Desktop computers aren’t going away anytime soon.
Typical.
Only a PC evangelist could moan about the qualityvof a cut and paste implementation.
i haven’t read the entire string, but WTF bobx? I read crigley for years back in the (ahem) ’80’s, but how the F can he (or mor likely THEY) use hypocrisy to relate ease of cut and paste, a Macintosh original concept, to anything going on here? Pain in the ass for who? Not me bubba!! Pain in the ass is being tied to a desktop. Ipads cut & paste just fine for me – wouldnt trade for a windows “solution” to save my life. Whoever wrote that drivel needs to go out and accomplish something in their OWN NAME and F-ing leave steve jobs alone – he’s a genius and Robert X Cringley, wherever he is, isn’t qualifiied to pick his wardrobe for a keynote these days let alone critique his work. Cringley used to be funny. His ghost writers suck.
Cringely misses the point. Steve Jobs was referring to the fact that the iPad as a tablet computer, in general, must be able to do things better than both a laptop or a desktop, otherwise this “middle category” of computers has no reason for being. The things the iPad can do better should outweigh those things it cannot do as well. Some things will take a bit of getting used to. We will adopt to these in time, at least most of you will. To say that Cut, Copy and Paste (CCP) is not as easy as CCP on a desktop, is a poor example. Do you buy a tablet computer so that it will do this function better than a desktop? I don’t. I will get used to CCP using touch controls. You can too. Get with the program. Had the situation been reversed and you had always used a tablet computer, and were introduced to a desktop computer with a mouse for the first time, you would have complained about something about the desktop as well.
For me, the hardest part of an iPad is getting data off the iPad. Admittedly, it’s become easier to import and export Office files via QuickOffice support with Dropbox, but why does that have to have a non-Apple workaround – and it is still a problem because it only works with WiFi, and not the cable sync. Sure, WiFi is ubiquitous, but when traveling there are just some places where you cannot get WiFi. And I can’t easily get photos off the iPad if taken with a third party app like Camera+ which I need to use because it has an image stabilizer where Apple’s camera does not. I hope someone in the media champions this deficiency still in the iPad, rather than making red-herring assertions about copy-paste which seems to be adequate.
I used to get so mad at apple until someone explained this to me
so I’v been in your situation before:
step 1: open itunes and select your ipad
step 2: select the apps tab
step 3: scroll /all the way down/
step3: the should be a (usually short) list of apps, selecting one will display a (usually long) list of files, I think you can just drag and drop but you might have to use the buttons (especially on windows)
and that’s it, it’s called “itunes document sharing”
if your app isn’t on the list, the developer has not enabled it, so you should request it from him/her
While Cringely is fun to make fun of, the writing is all flamebait. Pure crap.
Cringely makes me Cringe……..
Eventually, the humanity will evolve to a finger and a button. The button will provide for all the needs of the finger. Then humanity will die out, because the finger will be too lazy to push the button.
Cringley presages this concern. Copy and paste on an iPad requires using your finger to choose what you want to copy, selecting “copy”, then using your finger to choose where you want to paste and selecting paste. How hard is that? Are we more coordinated with the mouse and screen? Yes, we’ve been practicing since 1984. Are we getting better touching the screen? Even us old farts are figuring it out.