iPhone copy & paste now! …be careful what you wish for

by Justin Horn on Nov 26th, 2008 @ 12:30 pm

On his website Daring Fireball, John Gruber recently responded to an article by Macworld about the Storm’s copy & paste feature. Hopefully those of you that read this will give apple a bit more credit for waiting to deliver it’s copy & paste solution.

Here is the section of the Macworld article that covers copy & paste:

And while we’re on the subject of welcome features that users are clamoring for, let’s not overlook (cue fanfare) cut-and-paste. BlackBerry has shown Apple how it’s done, by using the same multi-touch technology used in the iPhone 3G. Here’s how it works: you put one finger at the start of what you want to copy, and one finger at the end to highlight text; then press the Menu button to select ‘cut’ or ‘copy’. Now, this is a feature that we haven’t really felt the need for but the Macworld readership has being quite vocal about the lack of cut-and-paste on the iPhone. RIM’s solution doesn’t work well enough for us because it is fiddly beyond belief (“using this would drive you mad,” said one of our testers). But in the absence of anything better from Apple this is an area where RIM scores a point, just.

And Gruber’s comments:

“How exactly is a crap UI that ‘will drive you mad’ showing Apple how it’s done? Would the iPhone be better with more — but poorly-designed — features? I’m sure some people agree, but it seems an odd sentiment for Mac users.”

I believe the question from Gruber’s comments sums it up quite nicely. My answer is NO, I don’t need more features just to have them, especially poorly designed ones. This idea of quantity vs quality applies to many facets of life, not just programming…do you really need 37 different wash setting on your dishwasher? No, probably not, but it helps their marketing department and as consumer we eat it up!

Even though it’s just apple being apple in response to unfounded user demands, I still give them credit for not throwing something together like RIM. Storm’s failure to deliver copy & paste in an intuitive and easy to use way should really give those iPhone users demanding this feature pause. What’s the point of having a feature if it’s such a pain in the ass to use, you never do? Be careful what you wish for!

Follow me on Twitter @justin_horn

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