Back in August AT&T sent out a customer satisfaction survey to all iPhone owners. Well now it seems a new survey is being sent out to all of us on the AT&T network asking how the 2.1 firmware is working for us and what we want to see next on your iPhone 3G.
Now don’t get too excited yet! Just because they are asking what we want does not necessarily mean we will get it. Keep in mind Apple has stated before that certain features such as copy/paste and directional GPS take a back seat to other issues that need addressing so on and so forth. But it is better than AT&T and Apple flat out ignoring us right? So at least it is a start.
Apple Insider states:
The questionnaire asks owners to pick the top five hardware or software add-ons they’d like to see and include many of the most prominent requests made in the community, including cutting and pasting text, built-in instant messaging, Flash/Java support and MMS messaging.
So when and if you get this survey, be sure to speak your mind and let AT&T what know what you want. This is our chance… they seem to be listening. (Or at least they are pretending to be!)
Sure, iPhone 2.2 is getting better and better, but after 2 years and the best graphical user interface team ever put on Jobs’ vegan earth, we still don’t have official cut, copy, and paste functionality. Blackberry Storm, however, which hasn’t even hit the market yet? Looks like they’ll get it Day One.
Our frenemies over a Crackberry.com pass along the deets (via BGR), while a commenter updates on the functionality:
What it says is that you simultaneously place one finger at the beginning of the text you want to copy and one finger at the end of the text you want to copy. This will highlight the selection. You can remove your fingers at this point. If the selection isn’t exactly what you want you can touch at the beginning of the highlight and slide the highlight to where you want. Likewise for the end of the highlight. Then there are two ways to copy. First way: “click” (as in touch the screen and press) in the middle of the highlight. This brings up a menu box with the copy command. Alternatively you can press the physical menu button and select copy.
Blarg! We think our brains just vomited.
Dieter points out that this won’t work on the iPhone, as some of those gestures, like pinch, are already taken for things like zoom, but there are enough proof of concepts around now that Apple really should be able to nail it. Can we finally move up the priority list, Joz?
(Micro schadenfreuda dept.: Chad points us to the just sneak-peaked Blackberry App Center (kudos on the original naming there fellas!), which is — drum roll please — CARRIER bound.)
Wired’s blog picked up a story from iPhone Atlas today about a minor MobileSafari browser UI change that sees the (defaults to Google) search box surfaced right on top beside the URL address box (currently it only pops up when the top box is activated to save on vertical real estate). To compensate, the Refresh button gets demoted and tucked inside the refresh box. Not sure about the usability on this change yet…?
The more interesting speculation is about cut and paste, which Wired claims NO specific info on, but offers this as part of the ongoing search for some reason why Apple hasn’t yet implemented this seemingly core functionality:
It’s possible that Apple is taking so long to implement copy and paste not because it is difficult, but because Apple is reinventing it. Imagine a system-wide menu added to all applications which, instead of shuffling items off to a clipboard, lists all the places you can send that file (or text string). This would be like the existing “Open with” option available in the Mac’s right-click menu — each application effectively reports to the OS exactly what kind of files it can handle and the OS remembers this. Thus a picture could be sent to not only the Photo app, but to any other photo program. Text could be sent directly to any open dialog box in, say, Safari.
We recently covered the new OpenClip project, and expansion of what was first demonstrated with MagicPad, and we liked both their implementation and their moxy in trying to pip Apple to the cut and paste post. Not everyone was as entirely impressed as us, however. John Gruber of Daring Fireball questioned whether or not the developers were really respecting the App Store SDK agreement. Since OpenClip aware applications write to their own sandbox’d Documents directory, but read the last-modified chunk from other applications Documents directory, Gruber considers it more of a loophole, and cites Apple’s iPhone OS Programming Guide:
Not simply that no other application can write to, but which no other application can access. That this restriction is not yet enforced at a technical level (such as is the case with an app attempting to write outside its own sandbox) does not mean it’s permitted.
Worse yet, Gruber points out that the current Beta 4 of the upcoming 2.1 firmware DOES enforce complete denial-of-access to other application’s Documents directory:
The OpenClip demo apps, which work as advertised on iPhone OS 2.0.2, do not work in the current 2.1 beta, because apps are no longer able to read or even see other apps’ sandboxes.3 To be clear, this change is clearly not in response to OpenClip; Apple began seeding the 2.1 betas with these tightened sandbox restrictions before OpenClip debuted, and the iPhone OS Programming Guide has stated all along that apps can’t “access” the contents of other sandboxes.
However, I’m not entirely certain any of that matters. OpenClip, based on my understanding, was never intended to be a long-term solution, merely a proof-of-concept to show that cut, copy, and paste could be done in an elegant manner on the iPhone, to keep a spotlight on the continued lack of cut, copy, and paste support from Apple, and to encourage the discussion of the issue and implementation.
In that regard, I think they’ve already succeeded.
Following up on the earlier post about OpenClip, the new open-source framework for implementing a shared (i.e. cross-application) clipboard for the iPhone, the video above highlights developer Zac White’s presentation at iPhoneDevCamp2. Not enough for you? Okay, TiPb had another chance to talk with the innovative folks at Proximi (makers of MagicPad, the original proof-of-concept for this functionality), who were kind enough to share a few more details with our readers.
Cali Lewis over at Geekbrief.tv recounts how iPhone App Store developer Juviwhale (who previously spoke to TiPb about his work on MagicPad) met up with a college student named Zac White at Dev Camp, who turned MagicPad’s localized cut/copy/paste functionality into cross-application gold with the open-source OpenClip framework:
Apple forbids applications from running in the background because it would take up too much of the iPhone’s resources. Also, developers are not allowed to create plug-ins that make their apps work with other apps on the iPhone. Zac White’s Open Clip framework uses a shared space on the iPhone. Any application that includes Open Clip can then access the common area and write to it, and read from it, thereby enabling copy and paste between participating apps.
Bottom line, it looks like any developer can add OpenClip, and instantly gain access to the shared cut/copy/paste pool. (Two of the apps demonstrated, sing a similar slide-up set of buttons to the proof-of-concept David Friedman showed off a few weeks back)
David Friedman writes in to let us know he’s thrown his hat into the ‘This is how I think Apple should implement cut-and-paste’ ring. His idea is simple, intuitive, and doesn’t look to interfere with the current magnifying glass insertion point UI.
Here it is in a nutshell — when you have the magifying glass up, there’s a button you can press to toggle the various things you need for cut and paste — select, cut, copy, and paste. David recommends that the options shown would be contextual based on whether or not you have anything in your clipboard. When you’re in a text-entry field, that toggle button would appear in place of the space bar area at the bottom, while areas with text that lack text entry (like Safari) would need an unobtrusive button to appear when in the text-selection mode.
All in all, we like it.
No convoluted finger gymnastics
No trying to remember how many fingers you need to use for a given action
Compatible with the current UI. In fact, it’s consistent and keeps the current text-selection metaphor of the UI intact. It just adds to it.
Tired of waiting for a cut, copy, and paste on the iPhone? MagicPad — a Note App replacement that also features Rich Text editing (buh-bye Marker Felt!) — sure was. Witness the above proof-of-concept video. Ladies and gentlemen, the holy grail of iPhone feature.
Curious as to how they implemented their solution, and what challenges they faced? So were we, so we asked them. Read on for their answer!
Another bit which may or may not make it into 2.1 is copy/paste. We’re still both hopeful and skeptical, but supposedly in the new version of the WebKit framework exists commands for “plugins,” “copy,” “paste,” “cut,” and some others. We can’t confirm if these really exist (and if they do, we don’t know how they’ve actually been there, or if they’re simply holdovers from the desktop WebKit frameworks), so don’t hold your breath.
Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s head of iPod and iPhone marketing has previously stated that cut, copy, and paste is on the future feature list, but with limited time and resources, Apple didn’t get to it for 2.0. Will 2.1 be different?
What do you think? Any breath holding on your end?
Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s head of iPod and iPhone marketing shed some light on the iPhone 3G/2.0 and some of its highly requested, yet still missing functionality, like where’s our ability to select text, cut it or copy it, and paste it?
Apple has a priority list of features, and they got as far as they could down that list with this model
Why isn’t there a constant yet ever-so-slightly-disappointed voice telling us we missed our last ten exists and threatening to “re-calculate”?
[T]here are some murky “complicated issues” preventing driving directions apps at the moment. “It will evolve. I think our developers will amaze us.”
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
