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Hints at iPhone Copy and Paste in Firmware 2.1?

Copy / Paste - Pre-2000 Unix Style

ktemkin said:
Yes you are.

Double-tapping to determine a starting location is bad.

There is no way in the world that any two taps on an iPhone are in the exect same position.

So, do you use the position of the first tap. Or the second tap?

If you say the second tap, I will lay money that more times than not, your second tap does not land where you think it should land.

Do a test like this . . . type a row of periods across several lines of the notepad. Now, using your double-tap technique, try and place your second tap EXACTLY between the two period you intended.

It will be a 50/50 proposition, at best.

Any cut/paste idea with double-tapping to determine a location is doomed.
Click to expand...

Forgive me for being archaic, but why not model copy/paste after the old X-windows mouse copy / paste. If there were a small copy icon say in the lower left corner (can turn it off in settings), press it and hold with left thumb to activate copy, then tap once with right hand finger or thumb to select a word, twice for a line (or sentence), and three times for a paragraph. Or, press and drag to select an arbitrary area. Then release the left thumb. The icon changes to paste.

Press and hold the icon again. Select an insertion point with right hand digit (sliding as necessary with magnifying glass showing insertion point), then end contact to complete the insertion. To discard the selection just press the paste icon then release without any 2nd digit contact.
 
Finally. The pause button while installing apps will be nice also, in addition to stability.
 
living in the past iphone

WHAT! i cant believe it doesnt have that already. some smart phones have had that for at least 3 years. (palm treo) il worry about this when i have the cash to get an iphone, im sure there is a workaround for those who cant live without it in the meantime. I find it a feature that is very useful, i never expected to be able to do that copy paste magic on my treo until i discovered the easter egg hiding in the command menu. Its very good for when you put a phone number in your notes and you wanna add it to contacts. or when texting addresses and gossip. treos have some advantages like card slots and an infrared port, but so does the iphone with its kickin browser, accelerometer, and decades of OS knowledge to integrate it with your computer like no mobile device has ever come close to.
 
elbirth said:
this will be really cool. before I had an iPhone I was of the idea that you didn't really need copy and paste on a mobile device because it's not meant to be a full-blown computer with all the bells and whistles- just enough to get you by when you're on the go. Then after having used it for a couple weeks now, I do admit that copy & paste would be incredibly useful in a lot of situations- even when posting on forums and wanting to quote multiple people, for example. Or give someone a URL in an email you want to quickly reply to, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are literally all KINDS of situation where you need cut/copy/paste on an iPhone. You have no idea just how frustrating it can be until you've run into the situation. It kills me that there are so many people who shrug it off!

Think of moving information between Safari <> contacts, Safari <> calendar, Safari <> email, Safari <> notes, and all the other combinations you can form with all the apps.

Example: Copy/Cut/Paste is especially required when you are typing out emails, and you have to rearrange words, sentences and paragraphs, or paste in and arrange external data. I run ecommerce websites, and I am always referencing long order numbers, product IDs, and customer names in vendor emails that I obtain from safari and it drives me FREAKING CRAZY when I have to USE PEN AND PAPER to copy the data into emails! Or when I just want to copy all the customer name/shipping information of an order into an email or notepad.

I can't imagine how someone could write a blog post on an iPhone without copy/cut/paste. Rearranging the text is a major issue, and how in the heck would you format text with bold/italic/headings/etc if you can't select anything ?

COME ON APPLE, GET THIS DONE!
 
EVERYBODY wants copy and paste.

But its really not as easy to implement as people are making out when touch is your only mechanism on a screen of that size.

Its as simple as that really. I trust Apple to come up with the right solution.
 
Native To Do List & Copy And Paste???

Is it just me but am I the only one very annoyed by the fact that the iphone the the "greatest mobile device" does not have "copy & past" and the "To do list feature" that is found on your mac desk top?!?!?
I am a bit stunned that Steve Jobs would over look this very important feature set of iCal?!

I am not aware of any other phone/PDA/Mobile Device that will not allow you to sync natively with your computers "To Do" feature. (Really, we should not have to resort to 3rd party apps to accomplish this)

Also when are we going to get more robust Bluetooth capability such as Syncing/sending and exchanging contact information with other mobile devices or iphone users, or the ability to sync up a apple wireless keyboard to the iPhone (now that's an idea!!!!) and the ability to pull files off your computer via bluetooth, and the ability to print to a Bluetooth enabled printer???
 
Blue Tooth!!!! Blue!!!! Tooth!!! Blue Tooth!!!

When are we going to get more robust Bluetooth capability such as Syncing/sending and exchanging contact information with other mobile devices or iphone users, or the ability to sync up a apple wireless keyboard to the iPhone (now that's an idea!!!!) and the ability to pull files off your computer via bluetooth, and the ability to print to a Bluetooth enabled printer???


Apple are you listening???
 
i love that they're working for copy and paste. it would be a huge add on for those who want to use it for business. hopefully they'll also enable disk mode and have the ability to store and edit documents. now that would be the cat's pajamas!!

and let's see some MMS and native iChat that runs in the background and announces new messages like the text feature does.:apple::apple:
 
when they do copy and cut, it will sove some other issues too.

Hopefully, text forwarding.
 
Originally Posted by ktemkin View Post
Yes you are.

Double-tapping to determine a starting location is bad.

There is no way in the world that any two taps on an iPhone are in the exect same position.

So, do you use the position of the first tap. Or the second tap?

If you say the second tap, I will lay money that more times than not, your second tap does not land where you think it should land.

Do a test like this . . . type a row of periods across several lines of the notepad. Now, using your double-tap technique, try and place your second tap EXACTLY between the two period you intended.

It will be a 50/50 proposition, at best.

Any cut/paste idea with double-tapping to determine a location is doomed.
Click to expand...

Ahhh...semantics, semantics. The double-tap method is by far the best suggested so far.

The "starting location" would be wherever you release the cursor. For example, everyone is familiar with holding down to make the magnifier pop up, then dragging it to the desired location, and letting go. The copy and paste would work no differently, except you would tap twice instead of once...the second tap is the one you hold down, drag, then let go at the desired location. Perhaps the magnifying bubble could change colors or something just to remind you that you are in "select/copy" mode.

It's really not an impossible idea at all. Seems pretty simple to me. The video on youtube is pretty good...but using two fingers is a bit clumbsy, especially if you use your thumb with one-hand. Everyone is familiar with "double-clicking," and I would bet money that apple would prefer a "double-click" to a PC-eque "right-click." I do like the idea of having the blue bar come up to remind you that you are in "select mode" after finding the starting location. Once this bar is up, selecting the "end location" wouldn't necessarily require two taps...it could work just like magnifying. Again though, what matters is where you release the cursor, not where it starts.

I think it would be great if apple made some sort of "clipboard" app that allowed you to copy text directly to it. After selecting text, the text could become a bubble/button of sorts, with two tabs- one for "copy" and another for "add to clipboard." When pasteing, you would either "paste" or "select from clipboard." This would allow you to modify or even create text to be pasted within a clipboard app, and to copy multiple "clips" in one browsing session for later use. Just my 2 cents..
 
dicklacara said:
But, here's the rub-- Apple plans/wants to introduce other MultiTouch devices (tablets, portables, desktops, etc.), presumably, with larger MT displays than the iPhone.

...Apple can't do that without telegraphing their intentions for new MT devices.

What to do?

Let a few iPhone customers bitch and moan about no C/P... and ignore them (until they can do it right).

That's exactly what Apple s doing, IMO!
Click to expand...

You may be correct in saying that the delay in implementing C/P on the iPhone is a result of Apple's attempt to achieve consistency on all their MultiTouch devices. But I think that they're underestimating the need for C/P on the iPhone, and waiting for them to devise an ideal solution is getting frustrating. For example, composing e-mails where I have to delete many lines of quoted text is needlessly time consuming without C/P.
 
Someone may have already thought of this or maybe even another way of implementing cut&paste (i havent read all the posts) but the way I see it being used is to:

Tap and Hold on some text then slide your finger over the text you wish to highlight. Upon releasing your finger a menu could pop up with cut, copy and paste options. Tap copy. Move to new location. Tap, Hold, release the same menu pops up then just tap 'paste'.
 
How many developers does Apple have?

I'm just shocked at how long it takes them to put out updates and how buggy all the built in apps are. You'd think for their flagship product they could afford one developer per app. They must be hiring 18 year olds. I mean who writes update software that can't backout of an upgrade. I couldn't use my phone the entire day the 2.0 update came out because the software bricked my phone then tried to get the updates from Apple. Um, wrong order of operations.

Their internal API must me a mess. I'm still waiting for stability and functionality I had in my Palm Pilot 10 years ago. Search is still ridiculous. All of the internal apps are ridiculously slow now. I can't fathom how they implemented such slow software. It's not like the phone has to do much. It has to be a phone....

I got the iPhone becuase I thought that Apple wouldn't put out a device that was that bad. Then I figured that when they decided to open the API, we'd see changes, but they locked it down so hard, developers can't really do anything interesting. No access to the address book or calendar? Is Apple insane?

They should look at the old Palm. They had so much buy in from their developers. A little bit of a pain to write apps, but they really wanted folks to make the device more useful.

Finally, I expected Apple to have better support. Their website for the iPhone is pathetic.
 
*More* whining after C/P

I suspect that there will actually be more whining after Copy and Paste is finally implicated! The reason is that all the people like me who are too demanding to buy a device that does not do Copy and Paste will become new iPhone users. As users, I'm sure that the device has many other shortcomings that are not deal breakers, of which we will become aware (and proceed to complain about).

The idea that Copy and Paste was on a list of things to do but was not a high enough priority is laughable. If they honestly thought that a scientific calculator was a higher priority than Copy and Paste then they have no business selling me anything. As this forum indicates, they simply have not been able to find a way to implement it in a way that makes them happy, but I think the other thing is that they are not mature enough to admit that they screwed up. (re: using the obvious motions as part of the screen navigation instead)

The other thing which I have not seen mentioned is that the cut and paste is going to have to run resident in the phone at all times in order to be active in different applications. I am not an iphone owner/user, but it seems like they only allow one program to be active at a time? Can you do other things while you are receiving directions from TeleNav (or whatever the equivalent service is for AT&T)? For that matter, can you access Safari/Address Book/Calendar while on a voice call?

Also, is the multi-touch not compatible with some form of "mouse gestures"? It does seem strange that the only thing it is used for is pinching and unpinching...


M@

PS http://www.googleguide.com/calculator.html (advanced calculator functions already were possible, copy and paste still involves pen and paper and a whole lotta typing.)

edit: Thanks for the answer Ntombi. I just saw this on another board of this forum about Magic Pad (rich text editor) that has introduced a cut and paste functionality. The app is currently awaiting approval from Apple, so hopefully they hire the development team! Naturally, Magic Pad's cut and paste functionality does not extend into other apps and so it's still a fail, but it does show promise:
https://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2008/07/28/magicpad-editor-offers-copy-and-paste/
 
onehoop said:
SNIP

The other thing which I have not seen mentioned is that the cut and paste is going to have to run resident in the phone at all times in order to be active in different applications. I am not an iphone owner/user, but it seems like they only allow one program to be active at a time? Can you do other things while you are receiving directions from TeleNav (or whatever the equivalent service is for AT&T)? For that matter, can you access Safari/Address Book/Calendar while on a voice call?

SNIP
Click to expand...
Yes, you can do all of those things while on a call. I'm often on a call and adding/changing my calendar, looking up contacts, etc. That's the point of a smartphone. ;) And now with 3G, you can use data and the phone at the same time.

The "one program at a time" thing is for 3rd party apps, not the innate iPhone software.
 
onehoop said:
I suspect that there will actually be more whining after Copy and Paste is finally implicated! The reason is that all the people like me who are too demanding to buy a device that does
Click to expand...

Whining will occur no matter what is released. People need to understand that. No matter what Apple does or doesn't do, there will always be a segment who doesn't like what occured or what didn't occur

Honestly, I don't mind it as the negative people are still part of the Apple Community and their voices can in fact express the actual problems facing whatever the product is and how Apple can make it better
 
Kind of late to this thread. But this is great news. I thought I would not need the copy paste function, but this weekend I can think of 5-6 times I would of needed it. I am starting to see I need it more and more. This is great news!

I hope it comes to light.
 
it's hard for me to imagine apple marketing this one to business users without it. however, mine arrives tomorrow, so we shall see.
 
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