Copy + Paste Coming Soon To An iPhone Near You?

Written on August 03, 2008 by Josh Pigford and 8 people have commented

This weekend was the 2nd annual iPhoneDevCamp held, mostly, in San Francisco. iPhoneDevCamp is a 3 day event where iPhone/iPod touch developers get together to learn and develop with other developers and this year seems to have churned out one of the most highly requested features for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Andrew Mager posted a video that shows Copy and Paste in use on the iPhone.

The video does not give many details on it but it seems, at this point, that the copy functionality basically copies all the text of a document/webpage/etc and then allows you to paste it in an input area. The video does not showcase any sort of “Select” functionality (such as selecting partial text) but regardless this would be a much welcomed addition to the iPhone/iPod touch.

John Gruber makes a great point in that Apple most likely will add a copy/paste feature but just hasn’t gotten to it yet. You can’t have everything all at once or you’d never get the product launched.

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#1 weisen says:
Sure, you can’t have everything. But they chose the wrong thing not to have.
#2 Gordon R. Vaughan says:
Getting good copy + paste might be enough to nudge me into buying an iPod Touch. I couldn’t believe that feature was missing, I found it quite limiting.

I’ve been wondering if Apple is still undecided on the way it wants to implement selecting text. Maybe there’s a more “elegant” way they’re trying to get to work but are still not happy with.

Who knows, but if they’ve got major ambitions for their multi-touch technology, then selecting things on the screen and other mouse-like actions are not minor issues.
#3 christian says:
This is actually an application from Proximi, a mobile communications developer. The application is called MagicPad (http://magicpad.proximi.com/).

Here is more info on the company: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/proximi

So really this is not an example of a system-wide function but of one company developing it for one specific application.

Although I think copy/paste will be included in the near future, especially if Apple wants the iPhone/iPod Touch to be relevant in the Enterprise market.
#4 Goobi says:
Okay. But I’m still waiting for Apple’s implementation. Its coming for sure though.
#5 Luis says:
Fake, really fake.
#6 Tony Korologos says:
No copy and paste in the iPhone. One of the greatest omissions in the history of computing. They might has well left out the comma key.

Maybe when they port over the freaking todo list from iCal into the iPhone they’ll get cut/copy/paste working too.

My iPhone is a technological wonder. It plays HD movies, takes pictures, surfs the internet, balances my checkbook and even plays vintage Iron Maiden while I’m working out at the gym. But I can’t copy and paste though.
#7 Simon Beckerman says:
Can’t you understand yet that the iphone is crap?? It’s just a cute little interface over an iPod for double price and no more. You barely can make a phone call on it…