OMG. If they keep improving this handset, they'll never keep them in stock. I'm getting annoyed at seeing a couple of hundred people standing in line every day. Copy/paste or not, the iPhone is in too high a demand.
My avatar keeps telling me I should use a WinMo handset like he does. He says almost nobody wants them so they always have plenty in stock. I told him that chimps are different from humans. I told him that intelligent primates aren't willing to settle for anything less than an iPhone. He got pissed and nearly tried to pull my arm out of it's socket until I tossed him a few bananas.
Dude, your just a riot. Have you ever considered a career in comedy? You could get up on stage and just stand there and tell the same joke like a thousand times for a couple hours. You wouldn't even have to think up new jokes! Oh, and I got a stage name for ya : Steffen "Beat the Dead Horse Jobs". Anyways, you should definitely quit your job and go for it dude. You'll be great. That's assuming your older than twelve and you have a job. Which is pretty unlikely.
@OneLove: It's not hard to just add it, it's hard to add it right. If you've used an iPhone, you know the interface is thought from top to bottom and through. It's near impossible to add a new workflow to enter Cut/Paste "mode", select and get out, while being consistent with the rest.
For example, how would you do it in Safari? Mail? Every other Apps in AppStore? In a _consistent_ (read: same for all) manner?
In fact, I'm really intrigued to know how they did implement it. Tap&Hold maybe, or 2-finger-tap...? They already used Tap&Hold for something though...
My thoughts are they could have one finger held down for a few seconds to enter a text zoom mode to find the start position in the text then put down a second finger and drag just that finger to the end of the text. If you were to have a rather large thing you want to copy you could probably implement a lock on the first position by tapping twice with the second finger and then double tapping at the end position.
@hans: Thanks for the reply. I guess I haven't really used the iphone gui extensively.
On my HTC mogul you can select text by moving the pen/finger across the screen (the target gets a shadow to indicate selection) and when you raise your pen/finger, a drop down menu appears with "copy" as an option.
I find it hard to believe apple created the iphone but it cant solve the "cut and paste" conundrum?
Down below, I have a sentence in quotes. I'm going to copy and paste that sentence further down in the body of this post. I know by simply reading this post, you won't be able to actually witness me do it, but at least you'll see the results of copying and pasting when someone is equipped with the ability to do so, and I promise you, the sentence was, in fact, copied and pasted, not just merely retyped. Now look closely:
"This sentence has been copied and pasted."
"This sentence has been copied and pasted."
See how cool that is? And what's even cooler about it, is how quickly info and data can be duplicated and placed into other programs, applets, and files, or wherever else, without having to retype it all over again from scratch. You can also do what's called "cutting", not just "copying", prior to "pasting". And what's more, there are so many times where this whole cutting, copying, and pasting business would come in handy that I couldn't POSSIBLY list all of the reasons why.
It's a totally sweet feature that saves time and increases efficiency and I really seriously think you should add it to the iPhone. Yep yep! I really do!
Because Apple, sarcasm aside, waiting on you guys to add this feature is like watching someone stand and stare at a toilet for years, while frowning and rubbing their chin and tilting their head back and forth and hemming and hawing, and never reeeeeally deciding whether they should just go ahead and add that "pesky little toilet paper dispenser" after all. Well, isn't it obvious? Wink, wink... nudge, nudge... DO IT ALREADY! Sheesh.
Oh, and I know I don't speak only for myself when I say, "Thanks!" (Even if it may be presumptive. I have faith.). Smile!
*** In next week's episode (whenever that will be), we'll be addressing other "long overdue" and "obviously needed" features. Stay tuned...
"Will still be useless without true multi-tasking"? What the hell are you talking about. First of all, let's remove the copy/paste issue for a second and focus on multi-tasking.
Without even getting into the myriad issues related to multi-tasking and drained resources and poor performance (*Ahem* Windows mobile), Give me a legitimate use of multi-tasking that a simple notification framework can't resolve? When you need to switch apps, they close and save their state. Then you switch back, and they boot up quickly and restore their state.
Applications that would usually need to run in the background to maintain a stateful real-time connection to a server (think Instant messenging) can use the iPhone's notification service to maintain these connections. When data comes in, a notification is created and sent to the app which then can alert you to the new data. For listening to music or accessing the phone features while you are typing email or web browsing, the built-in apps have access to background multi-tasking.
Really the only conflict I can readily think of will occur when you are using a future WiFI VOIP app to chat to a friend and suddenly you need to pull up your address book/contacts/notepad without disconnecting the phone conversation. That does suck, but I think these types of situations where the notification framework won't resolve needed multi-tasking functionality will be incredibly rare..
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
COPY
Paste
Will still be useless without true multi-tasking,
I, as a man, have survived very well up till now.
OMG. If they keep improving this handset, they'll never keep them in stock. I'm getting annoyed at seeing a couple of hundred people standing in line every day. Copy/paste or not, the iPhone is in too high a demand.
My avatar keeps telling me I should use a WinMo handset like he does. He says almost nobody wants them so they always have plenty in stock. I told him that chimps are different from humans. I told him that intelligent primates aren't willing to settle for anything less than an iPhone. He got pissed and nearly tried to pull my arm out of it's socket until I tossed him a few bananas.
@Steffen
Dude, your just a riot. Have you ever considered a career in comedy? You could get up on stage and just stand there and tell the same joke like a thousand times for a couple hours. You wouldn't even have to think up new jokes! Oh, and I got a stage name for ya : Steffen "Beat the Dead Horse Jobs". Anyways, you should definitely quit your job and go for it dude. You'll be great. That's assuming your older than twelve and you have a job. Which is pretty unlikely.
Can anyone tell me why copy and paste is so hard to add to the iphone? I just don't get it? Isn't that a basic function in any user interface?
@OneLove: It's not hard to just add it, it's hard to add it right. If you've used an iPhone, you know the interface is thought from top to bottom and through. It's near impossible to add a new workflow to enter Cut/Paste "mode", select and get out, while being consistent with the rest.
For example, how would you do it in Safari? Mail? Every other Apps in AppStore? In a _consistent_ (read: same for all) manner?
In fact, I'm really intrigued to know how they did implement it. Tap&Hold maybe, or 2-finger-tap...? They already used Tap&Hold for something though...
@hans:
My thoughts are they could have one finger held down for a few seconds to enter a text zoom mode to find the start position in the text then put down a second finger and drag just that finger to the end of the text. If you were to have a rather large thing you want to copy you could probably implement a lock on the first position by tapping twice with the second finger and then double tapping at the end position.
RE: UPDATE
"Select your state and then check the list to see which Apple Retail Stores currently stock iPhone 3G.
Return after 9:00 p.m. to check iPhone 3G availability at your local Apple Retail Store."
And just like that, they were gone :)
"kid_blue @ Jul 25th 2008 1:35PM
setting your system time to 9pm allows you to check the availability of the stock online.
Also... I check my state (which is PA) and two malls still have stock.
I live in the US... and i doubt that they are 100% out of stock.
Fact or fiction? I'm thinking fiction."
DOH!
@hans: Thanks for the reply. I guess I haven't really used the iphone gui extensively.
On my HTC mogul you can select text by moving the pen/finger across the screen (the target gets a shadow to indicate selection) and when you raise your pen/finger, a drop down menu appears with "copy" as an option.
I find it hard to believe apple created the iphone but it cant solve the "cut and paste" conundrum?
copy and paste would be a nice feature... but for heaven's sake... LANDSCAPE TEXTING, pretty please
Hey Apple! Take a look at something...
Down below, I have a sentence in quotes. I'm going to copy and paste that sentence further down in the body of this post. I know by simply reading this post, you won't be able to actually witness me do it, but at least you'll see the results of copying and pasting when someone is equipped with the ability to do so, and I promise you, the sentence was, in fact, copied and pasted, not just merely retyped. Now look closely:
"This sentence has been copied and pasted."
"This sentence has been copied and pasted."
See how cool that is? And what's even cooler about it, is how quickly info and data can be duplicated and placed into other programs, applets, and files, or wherever else, without having to retype it all over again from scratch. You can also do what's called "cutting", not just "copying", prior to "pasting". And what's more, there are so many times where this whole cutting, copying, and pasting business would come in handy that I couldn't POSSIBLY list all of the reasons why.
It's a totally sweet feature that saves time and increases efficiency and I really seriously think you should add it to the iPhone. Yep yep! I really do!
Because Apple, sarcasm aside, waiting on you guys to add this feature is like watching someone stand and stare at a toilet for years, while frowning and rubbing their chin and tilting their head back and forth and hemming and hawing, and never reeeeeally deciding whether they should just go ahead and add that "pesky little toilet paper dispenser" after all. Well, isn't it obvious? Wink, wink... nudge, nudge... DO IT ALREADY! Sheesh.
Oh, and I know I don't speak only for myself when I say, "Thanks!" (Even if it may be presumptive. I have faith.). Smile!
*** In next week's episode (whenever that will be), we'll be addressing other "long overdue" and "obviously needed" features. Stay tuned...
I guess they're back...
http://www.apple.com/retail/iphone/availability.html
Ahaha.
@engadgetluvsapple
"Will still be useless without true multi-tasking"? What the hell are you talking about. First of all, let's remove the copy/paste issue for a second and focus on multi-tasking.
Without even getting into the myriad issues related to multi-tasking and drained resources and poor performance (*Ahem* Windows mobile), Give me a legitimate use of multi-tasking that a simple notification framework can't resolve? When you need to switch apps, they close and save their state. Then you switch back, and they boot up quickly and restore their state.
Applications that would usually need to run in the background to maintain a stateful real-time connection to a server (think Instant messenging) can use the iPhone's notification service to maintain these connections. When data comes in, a notification is created and sent to the app which then can alert you to the new data. For listening to music or accessing the phone features while you are typing email or web browsing, the built-in apps have access to background multi-tasking.
Really the only conflict I can readily think of will occur when you are using a future WiFI VOIP app to chat to a friend and suddenly you need to pull up your address book/contacts/notepad without disconnecting the phone conversation. That does suck, but I think these types of situations where the notification framework won't resolve needed multi-tasking functionality will be incredibly rare..