Is APPLE Reneging on Cut and Paste?

devonair

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Hear, hear, Icebike! =)

An "elegant" way to cut-and-paste? Please... just let me click and drag my finger on the freakin' screen. Add click-hold to pull up a contextual menu and you're done. Sure, this is stealing from WinMo and is built for stylus use, but I've been doing this with my bare finger for 2 1/2 years on a WM Treo, and something similar on Palm OS Treo's for 3 years before that (I think I had to use the actual menu buttons? ...its been too long to remember). The stupid click-hold magnifying glass isn't elegant, but I can learn to live with it. Forget elegant... give me functional.

Add to this the 4-5 month late push notifications and all of "my" wishlist items for the iPhone would be satisfied. (Well, with the exception of a CDMA version for Sprint, haha, and actual file-system/directory-structure access... but I don't think either of those will EVER happen.)
 

icebike

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The Palm Pre has cut and paste and the OS in that device is only release 1.0.

Seriously, the Palm will be Verizon's iPhone, but Palm has a GSM version as well. Its a compelling device, with no dictator standing in the road to progress.

The G2 is also coming.

We will look back fondly on the iPhone as the first "Pentium" of handsets after a long run of 8088s ad 286s. But unless the rumored Quad Processor iPhone arrives soon, I fear others will eat apple's lunch.

First and foremost, it has to be a phone. And the phone has to work. And so far, that has been the iPhone's biggest failing.
 

devonair

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I am incredibly excited for the "Pre". But I'm also excited to think how much harder Apple will have to work now that there is more compelling competition out there. And of course, this will also (hopefully) spur innovation in the Android, WinMo, and BBOS camps...

lol, and not to be a know-it-all, but: the Pre is launching exclusively on Sprint, so won't be Verizon's iPhone. =P Palm has always been close with Sprint, and the GSM version is launching first in Europe -- so Sprint should have at least a 3 month exclusivity (I'm guessing 6 month, though).
 

whmurray

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I've noticed that any mention of cut and paste, even those quoting iPhone marketing head Greg Joswiak, are systematically being deleted from Apple Forums lately. This started just prior to the release of 2.2.

Censoring posters is one thing, but censoring their own head of marketing seem a bit desperate.

Instead we get fairly useless "features" and pointless redesigns of various applications with no new functionality other than that provided largely by third parties (street view). Have we seen a de-facto core feature freeze on the iPhone?
And I have noticed that no one in this thread wants to address the question. The question is cut-and-paste, not Google Maps. That iPhone 2.2 does Google maps, has nothing to do with cut-and-paste. That it does many other good things has nothing to do with cut-and-paste.

Let's face it. The reason that Apple, nor anyone else, has done cut-and-paste for the iPhone is that it is a really hard problem. You will not see it on 2.n and maybe never.

Apple has not reneged because it has been scrupulously careful not to promise.
 

Darrell Bray

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Apple isn't going to just throw copy and paste in there much like rim did with the storm and end up with a disaster. When they do it it will be done right and that's why it's taking longer then people want, and 2.2 is great

This. Apple has a history of doing this kind of thing right, rather than right now. It is a riskier approach, but one that pays off in the long run.

Most likely they saw that they wouldn't be able to do it in time in a form they found up to spec, and so they are removing mention of it. Seems reasonable to me.
 

JustinHorn

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I am glad that you think so but the one has nothing to do with the other.

I never said they did. If you are a programmer you will have an almost unlimited list of features you want to get into your product, but have limited resources. So you have to prioritize the features that go into your product. I'm just saying I agree on updating the map app update before getting copy & paste out because he has a lot more benefit than copy & paste. Most thing you need copy and paste for are taken care of in other ways on the iPhone.
 

whmurray

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This. Apple has a history of doing this kind of thing right, rather than right now. .....
.They also have a record of being so cagey as to just barely avoid lying. They have acknowledged the requirement. They have been scrupulous about not saying whether or not they know how to meet it, much less whether or not they are they working on it. One has to be delusional to conclude from what they have said that it is just a matter of time and other resources.

I admit that it is a hard problem and that they may not know how to solve it. I admit that, while I really need it, I have no idea what it would look like. If that is the case, they should say so, not just string us along.

However, to suggest that it just does not make the resource cut is just silly. Cut and paste is fundamental. To suggest that it ranks behind any, e.g.,map, application just does not hold up. While it might be true in an individual users case, across all users it clearly outranks the next three things on the list. Apple knows it and we know it.

I miss it several times every day. It is the only thing about the iPhone that makes me ever consider going back to Palm.
 

whmurray

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I never said they did. If you are a programmer you will have an almost unlimited list of features you want to get into your product, but have limited resources. So you have to prioritize the features that go into your product. I'm just saying I agree on updating the map app update before getting copy & paste out because he has a lot more benefit than copy & paste. Most thing you need copy and paste for are taken care of in other ways on the iPhone.

I do not accept the implication that Apple is so resource constrained that one has to make such a choice. While I accept that you are entitled to your opinion, and while I concede that there might be a few that want an update to an existing and working application ahead of a basic function that works across all applications, I cannot even conceive that we would be having this discussion if their number were large,
 

JustinHorn

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Yes, it is my opinion, but Apple also came out and said it was on their list. I'm not sure why you "do not accept the implication that Apple is so resource constrained that one has to make such a choice." Seems logical to me, but like you said everyone is entitled to there opinion.

A new thought on this is since it is a system wide feature they might have been waiting for a big 3.0 update which could make a lot of changes to how everything works.
 
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whmurray

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Yes, it is my opinion, but Apple also came out and said it was on their list. I'm not sure why you "do not accept the implication that Apple is so resource constrained that one has to make such a choice." Seems logical to me, but like you said everyone is entitled to there opinion.

A new thought on this is since it is a system wide feature they might have been waiting for a big 3.0 update which could make a lot of changes to how everything works.

I hope you are right and that 3.0 comes soon.

One way to do cut and paste might involve making applications aware of the function via the API. Often such changes break some applications and orphan others. (Every upgrade to the Palm OS or hardware has left orphans.) The more applications that are released before a new API, the more orphans.
 

Gridfire

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I thought that an elegant UI solution would be to make use of the placefinder "lens" that pops up when repositioning your cursor. Just make it so that when you have the cursor at the beginning of the area you wish to swipe, tap the lens with another finger. The lens would shade blue or something to show that "swipe mode" is selected and then you would select what you want to cut/copy. At the end of your selection, tap again and a menu comes up asking whether you want to cut, copy or paste over your current selection. To dismiss tap outside the menu, to delete the selection entirely, tap the backspace on the keyboard. Did I miss anything?
 

whmurray

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I thought that an elegant UI solution would be to make use of the placefinder "lens" that pops up when repositioning your cursor. Just make it so that when you have the cursor at the beginning of the area you wish to swipe, tap the lens with another finger. The lens would shade blue or something to show that "swipe mode" is selected and then you would select what you want to cut/copy. At the end of your selection, tap again and a menu comes up asking whether you want to cut, copy or paste over your current selection. To dismiss tap outside the menu, to delete the selection entirely, tap the backspace on the keyboard. Did I miss anything?
Close but no cigar. The lens only appears when one is in a data entry field with the keyboard up. However, I have checked and find that most applications do not use double-tap. One might use double tap to call the lens/cursor and then the rest of your solution might work very well.

I note that a swipe in eReader calls up a special tool bar that can be used to mark and highlight text with a button to call "find." A quick and dirty solution would be to give developers an API that permits the application to know about, offer to the user, and call cut-and-paste. While not an elegant or comprehensive solution, it would be better than what we have now.

One of the places that I most miss cut-and-paste is in contacts. One of the "contact' applications might offer it as a feature, at least within the application. Another place that it would be useful would be within e-mail. Another would be between e-mail, contacts, and the calendar. Apple owns all three of those. Again, not elegant or complete but a big step forward. If Apple created an API, it could implement it in those applications and then offer it to other developers in the SDK.
 

Gridfire

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Close but no cigar. The lens only appears when one is in a data entry field with the keyboard up. However, I have checked and find that most applications do not use double-tap. One might use double tap to call the lens/cursor and then the rest of your solution might work very well.

I'm not sure what you mean by the double-tap. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I wanted to be in my explanation. However I take your "data entry" criticism, I obviously wasn't thinking ;). Quite how you'd manage to get past that I'm not sure. Maybe make the home button into the equivalent of the blackberry menu key with "exit app" as one of the possibilities, along with the entries for all those other tasks you might wish were added to the iPhone UI. I'm guessing that wouldn't happen in a month of Sundays though. Home IS Home and that IS that, so sayeth the Jobs.
 

whmurray

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I'm not sure what you mean by the double-tap. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I wanted to be in my explanation. However I take your "data entry" criticism, I obviously wasn't thinking ;). Quite how you'd manage to get past that I'm not sure. Maybe make the home button into the equivalent of the blackberry menu key with "exit app" as one of the possibilities, along with the entries for all those other tasks you might wish were added to the iPhone UI. I'm guessing that wouldn't happen in a month of Sundays though. Home IS Home and that IS that, so sayeth the Jobs.
The Home button is the only control that is available anywhere. There is a "double click" option setting for the Home button. The options are Home, Phone Favorites, or iPod. There could be another option. I would gladly give up the other options for cut-and-paste.
 

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