August 5th, 2008
Is copy and paste really needed on the iPhone?
I’ve been using Windows Mobile, S60, and Palm OS devices for years where most of those devices have had support for copy and paste and I admit to being one of those who have been talking up the need for copy/paste on the iPhone. However, I just picked up the iPhone 3G last Friday (about an hour process with about 40 people in line in front of me) and after using it extensively I began to seriously question the need for copy and paste on a mobile device and wonder if this is just a feature we are asking for since other mobile devices have it.
I sat down this weekend and pulled out several other mobile devices and then went through to figure out how many times I have actually used copy and paste on my devices. I consider myself a power user since I tend to push the limits with my devices with lots of 3rd party applications and using them on the go to get more done than your average person. I found that I may have used the copy and paste functionality 3 or 4 times in the last 6 months and it wasn’t that critical. I used it to copy and paste URLs into a text document, but a few times I actually wrote the URL on a piece of paper and then just entered it in the text file and it happens so occasionally for me that this is a workable solution. In my earlier post linked above, I mentioned the need for copy/paste in the WordPress client. I just turned my iPhone off and put it into flight mode this morning and you can actually create posts and save them locally on your device with no internet connection so there is no need to create them in Notes or somewhere else and then copy/paste them into WordPress.
Copy/paste functionality will be a nice thing to have on the iPhone, but I don’t think it is as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. I do still think that having Bluetooth keyboard support could help when you want to write extended text on the iPhone and hope Apple updates the Bluetooth profile support.
I would be very interested in hearing how many people actually use copy/paste on their mobile devices right now and wonder if there really is a serious need for the capability?
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Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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