cinnamon thoughts.

iPhone misses copy, cut and paste capabilities. It features the great magnifying glass though, which is the first step to a–in m opinion–great copy and past implementation. The following describes my idea of interacting with text input on the iPhone:

Mark text

1. Use the magnifying glass to position the cursor on one end of the text to be selected
2. Hold the finger down and tap with a second one (multi touch is great!) to start the selection mode
3. Lift the finger of off the display
4. Press and hold again to enter the magnifying glass mode and select the end of your text selection
5. Lift finger off of the display to complete selecting the text

Move text

1. Touch and holde the selected text and move it to a different position in your current document/input field
2. Lift finger to insert the text there

Copy text

1. Touch the selected text, hold and tap with a second finger
2. Lift fingers, text is copied
3. (Text stays selected until tapped elsewhere to easily delete it; practically a cut operation)

Paste text

1. Copy text
2. Move to a different document and position the cursor
3. Lift the finger
4. A translucent icon stays where the magnifying glass was (like a speech bubble pointing to the cursor position) and shows a preview of the text in the clipboard
5. Touching the icon inserts the text; touching elsewhere or starting to type dismisses the icon

Apple, I hope my implementation idea shows how badly I want copy/cut/paste on the iPhone.

tags: copy and past, improvement idea, iPhone, text selection

Posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 13:42 by Daniel M. Gattermann. This Post is filed under Apple, iPhone, Technology, Thoughts. You can follow responses through the and view other blogs commenting on this post. You can also leave a response, or trackback from your own site.