8 ms·

I must admit I really like the way they do it: they do not rush, don't push half baked solutions. It either works or it is not there. Look at the copy and paste

I must admit I really like the way they do it: they do not rush, don't push half baked solutions. It either works or it is not there. Look at the copy and paste: it was the laughing point, it took some time and now it is the best implementation there. Even more so with iPhone OS 4: multitasking, folders, unified inbox — looks like they just focused on what's important. Anyway, naysayers will always have Flash to cry about.

oneplusone 17y ago
Personally I really dislike copy and paste on an iphone. It is really annoying to use and always comes up when you don't want it to.
- adamhowell 17y ago
  Have you ever tried it on an Android? I'll admit the popup coming up all the time was annoying at first. But once I saw the alternative -- which was unusable as far as I'm concerned -- I didn't mind it as much.
  - jsz0 17y ago
    I've owned an Android phone since October and I have no clue how to copy & paste on it.
    - jpcx01 17y ago
      Android copy paste has been pretty seamless for me. Theres always the option there when I need it. Tap and hold and it'll appear.
      - jsz0 17y ago
        I just tried it in the gmail app and I don't get any copy & paste options?
        gchucky 17y ago
        I just looked up how to do this, as I couldn't figure it out. Slide open the keyboard, hold the shift key and drag your finger across the text you want to copy. I just tested it on my Droid and it works. Not sure about other Android phones..
        bruceboughton 17y ago
        Seriously, hold shift on a touchscreen device? What is this, the 30s?
    - jwhitlark 17y ago
      http://forum.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/8527-copy-paste.html http://forum.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/8527-copy-p...
  - nailer 17y ago
    Really? I had the exact opposite experience - constant unwanted cut and paste dialogs on Safari/iPhone, none at all (but there when I wanted it) on Android.
  - rksprst 17y ago
    Copy and paste works great on my blackberry. Which btw, I switched to after 3 years with the iPhone (first generation and 3G) where I hated copy and paste for the reason stated above (shows up when I don't want it to). Also, I now love my blackberry much more than I ever did the iPhone. Apps I use are available (maps, yelp, foursquare, pandora), and the multitasking and the advanced features of the OS just keep surprising me. I can use my blackberry to connect to a VPN (it's built in). Coming from the iPhone, I feel like my handcuffs have just been taken off and I'm now free to use my phone the way I want to.
  - aphyr 17y ago
    Agreed. Android copy and paste only works in 1 out of 10 text fields I've tried it on. Sometimes UI elements give a long-press option to copy. Seriously, copying an address from a text message to google maps should NOT be hard.
    - nooneelse 17y ago
      I don't know what you are talking about. I just tested that, and it worked fine.
      - aphyr 17y ago
        It doesn't work in yammer, market, contacts, google voice, or facebook. Google voice at least lets you copy the whole message, but then you have to paste and edit.
- nailer 17y ago
  Yeah, same here. When they added it to iPhone OS scrolling would constantly bring up cut and paste - I remember searching for a way to disable it. Android's browser uses a long tap for cut and paste, so never had this problem.
  - ugh 17y ago
    Huh? The iPhone uses long taps or double taps for initiating cut/copy/paste. Long taps work everywhere, double taps work only where there’s no zoom function. That’s a pretty clearly defined set of gestures, how would you be able to bring up the dialog accidentally? Note that as soon as you initiate scrolling and then keep your finger on the screen, you can keep it perfectly still as long as you want or continue scrolling anytime you want. The cut/copy/paste dialog will not show up. There is no reason why that dialog should show up when scrolling. The only way to bring up that dialog accidentally is to tap on the screen, keep your finger still for more than one second and then try to start scrolling. Seems odd for anybody to try doing that.
    - nailer 17y ago
      Perhaps they've improved things since I left iPhone. But I distinctly remember unwanted, aggressive copy / paste dialogs popping up when I wanted to do move around the page.
mrkurt 17y ago
"Market leader adds features in response to and inspired by features their smaller, more nimble competitors ship with." It's kind of the way of the world.
- absconditus 17y ago
  Who are the smaller and more nimble competitors?
  - mrkurt 17y ago
    Palm, HTC, Android (Google's huge, Android's not).
- kemiller 17y ago
  Right, those features totally never occurred to them before Palm and Google did them. Multitasking? Ads? WALLPAPERS! Where DO they come up with these amazing ideas?
  - mrkurt 17y ago
    Are we doing feature based checklists now, or comparing good implementations? Multitasking on a small device is largely a UI problem, and it sounds like Apple solved it almost like Palm did. You don't think they do research on what's out there, see how other people have solved problems, and adapt those solutions to what they're trying to do?
    - kemiller 17y ago
      I suspect Apple had a roadmap for all of these long before WebOS or Android came out. Could the final form have been influenced by those? Unknowable from outside. I'm not sure in what way you think this looks like Palm's solution.
- davidw 17y ago
  Apple is probably the market leader in smart phones in the US. But Nokia, as far as I know, is still the market leader in mobile phones, and have a good share of the smart phone market in other places, like Europe, that have been doing more with mobile phones longer than in the US.
mdolon 17y ago
I think this update is the complete opposite of that trend - Apple is trying to do a ton of new things all at once (ads, game center, multitasking, etc.), almost too much in my opinion.
- Hoff 17y ago
  It does look like a ton of stuff, yes. Apple is looking to establish and to extend their beachheads in both the smartphone and tablet spaces, and this is how you do that. You invest design and development and debug and test. Big-time. Being a response of marketing and features for the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and the HP Slate announcements, this looks quite potent. And interestingly, this approach looks quite reminiscent of how Microsoft slid in a new (Windows) computing platform from up underneath its competitors way back in the 1990s, too.
solutionyogi 17y ago
As Steve said it: "Now we weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste." I think it's a fantastic idea to add Background * API if you can't provide full blown multitasking. Covers 80% of the use cases.
- elblanco 17y ago
  > Now we weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste. I'm not sure if I'm more amazed at how something as inane as this basic operation is touted as a huge feature differentiator, or that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar a year computing company, who's been in the business literally from the start, talks about it with breathless urgency like it's the second coming. Copy/cut and paste is not a major feature, it should be buried among a list of minor enhancements. It's like the equivalent and releasing a new keyboard with a shift key on either side!
  - solutionyogi 17y ago
    I think you are underestimating how hard it is to implement proper copy/paste on a touchscreen device with no keyboard. I must say that I find Apple's implementation very intuitive and easy to use.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      Yes, I am calling it a basic feature. Like tires on a car. Every car has them, but rubber and tires are actually pretty complex things. No, I'm not saying that it doesn't have certain considerations necessary to make it work well. We can't even get proper clipboard support in Ubuntu these days. So I'm not saying it's really that simple. Yes, I am saying it's not a big feature. Again, it's like VW coming out with a new Jetta, and one of the specs they touted was "Now with tires!!!"
      - blubb 17y ago
        I think a slightly better comparison is if most other car makers had really lousy automatic transmissions that used 30% of the fuel, and VW waited to announce a car with an automatic transmission until they had one that worked really, really well and was just as efficient as a manual transmission.

oneplusone 17y ago

Personally I really dislike copy and paste on an iphone. It is really annoying to use and always comes up when you don't want it to.

adamhowell 17y ago
Have you ever tried it on an Android? I'll admit the popup coming up all the time was annoying at first. But once I saw the alternative -- which was unusable as far as I'm concerned -- I didn't mind it as much.
- jsz0 17y ago
  I've owned an Android phone since October and I have no clue how to copy & paste on it.
  - jpcx01 17y ago
    Android copy paste has been pretty seamless for me. Theres always the option there when I need it. Tap and hold and it'll appear.
    - jsz0 17y ago
      I just tried it in the gmail app and I don't get any copy & paste options?
      - gchucky 17y ago
        I just looked up how to do this, as I couldn't figure it out. Slide open the keyboard, hold the shift key and drag your finger across the text you want to copy. I just tested it on my Droid and it works. Not sure about other Android phones..
        bruceboughton 17y ago
        Seriously, hold shift on a touchscreen device? What is this, the 30s?
  - jwhitlark 17y ago
    http://forum.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/8527-copy-paste.html http://forum.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/8527-copy-p...
- nailer 17y ago
  Really? I had the exact opposite experience - constant unwanted cut and paste dialogs on Safari/iPhone, none at all (but there when I wanted it) on Android.
- rksprst 17y ago
  Copy and paste works great on my blackberry. Which btw, I switched to after 3 years with the iPhone (first generation and 3G) where I hated copy and paste for the reason stated above (shows up when I don't want it to). Also, I now love my blackberry much more than I ever did the iPhone. Apps I use are available (maps, yelp, foursquare, pandora), and the multitasking and the advanced features of the OS just keep surprising me. I can use my blackberry to connect to a VPN (it's built in). Coming from the iPhone, I feel like my handcuffs have just been taken off and I'm now free to use my phone the way I want to.
- aphyr 17y ago
  Agreed. Android copy and paste only works in 1 out of 10 text fields I've tried it on. Sometimes UI elements give a long-press option to copy. Seriously, copying an address from a text message to google maps should NOT be hard.
  - nooneelse 17y ago
    I don't know what you are talking about. I just tested that, and it worked fine.
    - aphyr 17y ago
      It doesn't work in yammer, market, contacts, google voice, or facebook. Google voice at least lets you copy the whole message, but then you have to paste and edit.
nailer 17y ago
Yeah, same here. When they added it to iPhone OS scrolling would constantly bring up cut and paste - I remember searching for a way to disable it. Android's browser uses a long tap for cut and paste, so never had this problem.
- ugh 17y ago
  Huh? The iPhone uses long taps or double taps for initiating cut/copy/paste. Long taps work everywhere, double taps work only where there’s no zoom function. That’s a pretty clearly defined set of gestures, how would you be able to bring up the dialog accidentally? Note that as soon as you initiate scrolling and then keep your finger on the screen, you can keep it perfectly still as long as you want or continue scrolling anytime you want. The cut/copy/paste dialog will not show up. There is no reason why that dialog should show up when scrolling. The only way to bring up that dialog accidentally is to tap on the screen, keep your finger still for more than one second and then try to start scrolling. Seems odd for anybody to try doing that.
  - nailer 17y ago
    Perhaps they've improved things since I left iPhone. But I distinctly remember unwanted, aggressive copy / paste dialogs popping up when I wanted to do move around the page.

mrkurt 17y ago

"Market leader adds features in response to and inspired by features their smaller, more nimble competitors ship with." It's kind of the way of the world.

absconditus 17y ago
Who are the smaller and more nimble competitors?
- mrkurt 17y ago
  Palm, HTC, Android (Google's huge, Android's not).
kemiller 17y ago
Right, those features totally never occurred to them before Palm and Google did them. Multitasking? Ads? WALLPAPERS! Where DO they come up with these amazing ideas?
- mrkurt 17y ago
  Are we doing feature based checklists now, or comparing good implementations? Multitasking on a small device is largely a UI problem, and it sounds like Apple solved it almost like Palm did. You don't think they do research on what's out there, see how other people have solved problems, and adapt those solutions to what they're trying to do?
  - kemiller 17y ago
    I suspect Apple had a roadmap for all of these long before WebOS or Android came out. Could the final form have been influenced by those? Unknowable from outside. I'm not sure in what way you think this looks like Palm's solution.
davidw 17y ago
Apple is probably the market leader in smart phones in the US. But Nokia, as far as I know, is still the market leader in mobile phones, and have a good share of the smart phone market in other places, like Europe, that have been doing more with mobile phones longer than in the US.

mdolon 17y ago

I think this update is the complete opposite of that trend - Apple is trying to do a ton of new things all at once (ads, game center, multitasking, etc.), almost too much in my opinion.

Hoff 17y ago
It does look like a ton of stuff, yes. Apple is looking to establish and to extend their beachheads in both the smartphone and tablet spaces, and this is how you do that. You invest design and development and debug and test. Big-time. Being a response of marketing and features for the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and the HP Slate announcements, this looks quite potent. And interestingly, this approach looks quite reminiscent of how Microsoft slid in a new (Windows) computing platform from up underneath its competitors way back in the 1990s, too.

solutionyogi 17y ago

As Steve said it: "Now we weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste." I think it's a fantastic idea to add Background * API if you can't provide full blown multitasking. Covers 80% of the use cases.

elblanco 17y ago
> Now we weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste. I'm not sure if I'm more amazed at how something as inane as this basic operation is touted as a huge feature differentiator, or that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar a year computing company, who's been in the business literally from the start, talks about it with breathless urgency like it's the second coming. Copy/cut and paste is not a major feature, it should be buried among a list of minor enhancements. It's like the equivalent and releasing a new keyboard with a shift key on either side!
- solutionyogi 17y ago
  I think you are underestimating how hard it is to implement proper copy/paste on a touchscreen device with no keyboard. I must say that I find Apple's implementation very intuitive and easy to use.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    Yes, I am calling it a basic feature. Like tires on a car. Every car has them, but rubber and tires are actually pretty complex things. No, I'm not saying that it doesn't have certain considerations necessary to make it work well. We can't even get proper clipboard support in Ubuntu these days. So I'm not saying it's really that simple. Yes, I am saying it's not a big feature. Again, it's like VW coming out with a new Jetta, and one of the specs they touted was "Now with tires!!!"
    - blubb 17y ago
      I think a slightly better comparison is if most other car makers had really lousy automatic transmissions that used 30% of the fuel, and VW waited to announce a car with an automatic transmission until they had one that worked really, really well and was just as efficient as a manual transmission.