Apple’s finally caving and adding basics like copy and paste and proper MMS support to the iPhone operating system’s third iteration, they announced today, plus a few other interesting goodies which catch it up to Android and then some. The iPhone still won’t run background processes like Android can, but if they implement push notifications well maybe they won’t have to. Yay for innovation and competition that leads to better products.
6 Comments
Russell McLean
I have never really understood the madness over copy and paste. I can only think of a couple of times I have wanted to use it. I found the lack of searchable email to be a bigger “miss”.
Gina Trapani
Agreed, re: good search. The Gmail interface on Android offers its amazing search box to your entire message archive, which was a big part of my motivation to switch.
Ted Avery
I agree with Russell. After owning an iPhone since July, I’ve still only encountered a couple of situations where I wished I had Copy & Paste.
But let’s face it, it’s definitely a basic feature that should have been there from the start. What if someone told you before the iPhone ever existed that in a few years people would be cheering over copy and paste support, and the ability to send MMS? It’s pretty ridiculous when you think about it, but I’m glad it’s finally going to be here and functional.
ShakespeareGeek
I tend to think of “features” like these more as bugs that they just got around to fixing. They offer cut and paste? It’s not like “Oh wow, cool, their competitors will be scrambling to catch up now!” but rather “Oh, good. It’s about time, it’s been annoying not having that.”
Russell McLean
The demo is available for viewing and it looks like they have done a terrific job implementing it.
What is it with Apple that they can make even the most mundane feature seem wonderful?
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0903lajkszg/event/index.html
David Singer
I’m with Russell, too. C&P never mattered to me all that much, maybe once or twice I thought “wish I had that.”
I am happy about MMS. It’s felt like a big hole in features to me, especially since the alternative was supposed to be using email and email on the iphone, no matter what type of connection I have, is terribly slow (terribly). That and all my friends and family don’t have email and do have MMS, so I’m still receiving MMS messages whether I want to or not.
Also very happy about the landscape keyboard. I’m just not a good iPhone typer and will appreciate the room.