iPhone Copy and Paste
Mar 17, 09:57 AMI’m not going to make any predictions about today’s iPhone 3.0 Special Event. Not only is my track record at such things is abysmal, but I’m also a wait-and-see kinda guy. In a few hours we’ll know what all the hullabaloo is about.
That said… there’s a persistent rumor that the iPhone will get cut and paste. (Finally, some may say.) I’m really of two minds about this.
On the one hand, there are times I would really like to copy text. I’m not sure how it will work cross-application, but it if it’s anything like the (funny but thoughtful) mockup Adam Lisagor put together after the original iPhone was released:
iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.
… then I think it will satisfy a lot of the people who have been asking for it since 2007.
On the other hand… I’ve gotten along fine without copy and paste for two years. I don’t want to start yelling CHANGE IS BAD OH NOES from the window, but if there’s a tradeoff between more functionality and performance, I know that I’ll take performance. I’ve not been happy with the responsiveness of the 2.x codebase on the 1st Generation hardware, and I don’t expect 3.0 to improve it. (2.x seems faster on the 3G hardware, but I suspect that’s my observational bias. Anecdotes are not data.)
Anyhow: Cut and Paste on the iPhone.
I guess we’ll all see if it’s there in a few hours.
(Video via marco.org.)
Update: Well, Cut, Copy, and Paste is in 3.0, and it looks nice. Let’s see how it works out.
