Late rumor has iPhone 3.0 getting copy-and-paste, multitasking

[AppleInsider]

Apple may be adding some of the iPhone's most heavily requested software features -- including multitasking the ability to copy and paste text -- with the unveiling of the 3.0 update this week.

In a live episode of Diggnation recorded at Austin's South by Southwest festival, Digg founder and show co-host Kevin Rose claimed to have "confirmation" that the feature would be a centerpiece of the new iPhone OS to be unveiled on Tuesday.

To select text, he said, users would double-tap on a word to bring up the iPhone's magnifying glass and then extend the "quotes" to cover the necessary text and perform the relevant action, though it's not known whether this would be limited to copying and pasting or would include cutting text outright.

He also hints that many of the software efforts in the year since iPhone 2.0 will bring the device up to the level of the Palm Pre, which while unreleased has a number of software advantages over Apple's platform. Notably, Rose made mention of "multitasking" before being interrupted during the segment. The Pre lets users tap a button to switch apps and lets owners launch apps without quitting the active program.

However, he also dampened hopes for video capture, explicitly warning that it wouldn't be part of the feature set for 3.0.



Rose has had a mixed track record for Apple-related rumors: while he accurately leaked the fourth-generation iPod nano and key components of iTunes 8, he has also been inaccurate regarding Blu-ray support and some iPhone features in the past. Nonetheless, he stressed at his show that the information came from a "friend" that has previously been a reliable source in the past.

Separately, Gizmodo also claimed to have two similar tips relating to copy-and-paste that were received independently from Rose's comments. Apple itself has long said that manipulating text would eventually come, but that there was a checklist of priorities which had pushed copy-and-paste out of at least iPhone 2.0.

[sflocal]

Let the whining begin!

[rnp1]

Originally Posted by sflocal

Let the whining begin!

Take out the "h"
iPhone wins again!

[astrosmash]

There won't be any multitasking until they start shipping iPhones with twice the RAM and enable virtual memory. As it stands, there is barely enough memory to run Safari and Mail simultaneously. Actually, on current devices I'd say there isn't enough memory to run Safari satisfactorily; it takes very little to have it run out of memory and quit.

[mechengit]

So Apple is going to release the push notification feature for 3rd party apps while allowing 3rd party apps to run in the background? That doesn't make sense.

[Booga]

I don't care whether Camera records video or not, as long as they give access to video in the developer's SDK.

[cy_starkman]

Originally Posted by mechengit

So Apple is going to release the push notification feature for 3rd party apps while allowing 3rd party apps to run in the background? That doesn't make sense.

Well I don't know what Apple has up its sleeve for 3.0

but implementing both does make sense. You don't actually want 20 apps running all at once (though maybe you do).

Stuff like TwitterFon, Facebook, MySpace, IM clients - they don't really need to be running, just able to use the push notification feature.

Other things, like your sales app, you don't want to quit, because the form is half filled in while you are working with the client and need to check some details in safari. Or something like Fring, while being on a Skype call, or one of the internet radio players, these things you want to run in the background and not quit just cause you are looking in contacts.

[hotmarkb]

Originally Posted by astrosmash

There won't be any multitasking until they start shipping iPhones with twice the RAM and enable virtual memory. As it stands, there is barely enough memory to run Safari and Mail simultaneously. Actually, on current devices I'd say there isn't enough memory to run Safari satisfactorily; it takes very little to have it run out of memory and quit.

I have to agree with you. Therefore I believe apple will announce what the NEXT generation iPhone will be able to do. And possibly it's release date.

[ascii]

Multitasking with only 128M ram? They better be small tasks.

Maybe that's what they'll do - any bg task that exceeds a certain footprint gets automatically killed.

[ksec]

MMS support? And finally some more Firmware fix for Connection and Reception problems.

[8CoreWhore]

I've tried video through jailbreaking with "Cycorder". The quality, due to hardware limitations, is very poor. My guess is Apple didn't want to enable video because of this reason. Now, on the other hand - just because it won't be enabled in the 3.0 update for existing iPhones, doesn't mean it won't be enabled on the new iPhone coming out whenever. BTW, although I get good test results for 3G speeds - doesn't mean the experience is good. Surfing on the iPhone 3G is like dial-up. We need more RAM (I don't mean storage) and a faster processor. AT&T needs to start boosting the network.

[Foo2]

Don't let your bod go the way of Alex. Cut the carbs and workout a little each day, man!

[iVlad]

Originally Posted by italiankid

Special announcement for copy & paste and MMS?

Glad Apple finally learned 'how to' do it... lol

These basic phone features are found on your 9.99$ Samsung.


I am expecting big news for 3.0

like Video LOL (again found on a phone in a 9.99$ range...

for a special announcement, it best be BIG.

Dont be a douchebag, go buy your 9.99 piece of crap

[sflocal]

Originally Posted by italiankid

Special announcement for copy & paste and MMS?
Glad Apple finally learned 'how to' do it... lol
These basic phone features are found on your 9.99$ Samsung.

Really?? $9.99?? Does the rest of the world know this? I mean, this is groundbreaking news! All those millions of iPhone buyers had no clue they (we) were being ripped off.

Go buy your $9.99 Samsung and be content will you please?

[hiimamac]

Originally Posted by sflocal

Let the whining begin!

Ok. Did anyone else notice that the original video was flash and the iPhone couldn't play it. Ha ha ha.

Of course appleinsider or someone posted it on you tube.

What a scam. Apple doesn't want flash. Google the "real reason there is no flash on the iPhone". Apple wants you to purchase they'd low quality definition of HD from their app store and not watch it free on hulu. Then of course there us the app store vs Adobe flash apps.

Just be glad millions if users have two year contracts about to expire. Keeps Apple honest.

[jlebrech]

Originally Posted by rnp1

Take out the "h"
iPhone wins again!

and throw in another "n" for good measure.

[theBigD23]

I would like Task Syncing. I, as well a lot of people I know, use tasks all of the time.

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

To select text, he said, users would double-tap on a word to bring up the iPhone's magnifying glass and then extend the "quotes" to cover the necessary text and perform the relevant action, though it's not known whether this would be limited to copying and pasting or would include cutting text outright.

This would surprise me. Double tap gesture is already booked by magnification. The lens is brought up by tap-and-hold that. What would distinguish moving the lens along the text from "extending quotes" or from just shifting view frame over the page? Not that much convincing...

[Shookster]

Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01

This would surprise me. Double tap gesture is already booked by magnification. The lens is brought up by tap-and-hold that. What would distinguish moving the lens along the text from "extending quotes" or from just shifting view frame over the page? Not that much convincing...

And how do you paste? Do you double-tap as if you were going to copy and then click a button somewhere?

[foljs]

Originally Posted by ascii

Multitasking with only 128M ram? They better be small tasks.

Yeah, because computers sure didn't multitask when only 128MB (and 64MB) where available.

Are you kidding me?

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by Shookster

And how do you paste? Do you double-tap as if you were going to copy and then click a button somewhere?

Paste operation should be activated by a dialog button. The dialog itself should pop up upon tap-and-hold gesture.

No, I don't tap twice, I do hold down, when I save something (having possible intention to manipulate the saved item somehow in the future). This is how it's working now. All this is already in place for saving pictures from the web.

Double tap is universal magnification gesture.

But selection is quite a problem....

[strikestrike]

Improved SMS and Contacts app?!?! Basics please...

[Voltaic]

Originally Posted by iVlad

Dont be a douchebag, go buy your 9.99 piece of crap

Only Apple can pull off giving thir users the most archaic and fundamental features in computing, and have them feel like they're getting something super-fantastic.
It's cut & Paste for crying out loud!!!
And you call "Italiankid" a douchebag? Better look in the mirror iVlad.

[bloggerblog]

I would like to point out that the iPhone already has multitasking, one could be using the phone while browsing Safari, and while the alarm-clock runs in the background. I guess what is meant by multitasking in this thread is for multiple 3rd party apps to run simultaneously, which I find unnecessary.

Apple can build a universal iPhone Push data container where the Header of the pushed data informs the iPhone which app the data belongs to and can update the little red notice number on the application's icon.

This would require minimal resources and free the iPhone from buggy 3rd party background-code.

[steviet02]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

To select text, he said, users would double-tap on a word to bring up the iPhone's magnifying glass and then extend the "quotes" to cover the necessary text and perform the relevant action, though it's not known whether this would be limited to copying and pasting or would include cutting text outright.

.....


He also hints that many of the software efforts in the year since iPhone 2.0 will bring the device up to the level of the Palm Pre, which while unreleased has a number of software advantages over Apple's platform. Notably, Rose made mention of "multitasking" before being interrupted during the segment. The Pre lets users tap a button to switch apps and lets owners launch apps without quitting the active program.

The action of copying and pasting, of which only the apparent copying is described here, sounds fundamentally wrong. A double tap will zoom, not bring up a magnifying glass today. What if I am on a web page and want to c&p some text, a double tap zooms in on the box the text currently resides. Makes no sense to me unless they are going to change the way the current UI works.

The Palm Pre is starting to look more and more like what the iphone could become from a software standpoint. While some things are currently shared between applications it would be great if there was a 'Quicksilver'/Spotlight type of search that goes on when searching for objects. I like that about the Pre and hope that Apple is taking note of the good things in the Pre so they can learn form them.

[Quadra 610]

One wonders, then, how on earth the iPhone was able to so completely shake up the entire indusry almost overnight, and then go on to nearly dominate it.

Oh wait . . . probably because it's already an amazing product WITHOUT copy/paste/multitasking/MMS/video.

It's only the whiny tech-heads that live on internet forums that are willing to give their first-born for these features - not necessarily because they'll actually make use of them, but simply for the sake of ego and status-massaging because then they too, can claim to have a couple of features that other, vastly inferior junk devices happen to have already.

I don't know where it's written that a successful product absolutely must match a competitor's product feature-for-feature.

Moving right along . . .

[steviet02]

Originally Posted by bloggerblog

I would like to point out that the iPhone already has multitasking, one could be using the phone while browsing Safari, and while the alarm-clock runs in the background. I guess what is meant by multitasking in this thread is for multiple 3rd party apps to run simultaneously, which I find unnecessary.

Apple can build a universal iPhone Push data container where the Header of the pushed data informs the iPhone which app the data belongs to and can update the little red notice number on the application's icon.

This would require minimal resources and free the iPhone from buggy 3rd party background-code.

You might find it unnecessary, but quitting Pandora to go look something up on the web is annoying. And the 'old argument' about buggy 3rd party SW is BS, you don't know what you're talking about. If they had some foresight into this they would have put in enough RAM to at least run their own apps without crashing, which Safari does quite frequently under heavy use.

Apple apparently cannot build a push data container because they are months late with that promise. My guess is that they realized this was not a great approach, I would not be surprised to see them scrap that idea.

[RichyS]

I think people are too quick to state that cut'n'paste is easy.

While technically it isn't very difficult to write some code to implement the feature, just take a moment to think how it may be done? How is it done on existing phones? It's usually pretty convoluted. For the $9.99 Samsung chap above, if that c'n'p is in any way as tricky as it is on my SE W910, then I can bet you don't use it very much. I know I hardly ever do.

Apple have to come up with a way of making c'n'p work within the existing UI framework. As others have stated, that means no 'double tap' as that already does a zoom. You can't just hold over the text, as that brings up the magnifier. Apple has to do something intuitive that fits with the multitouch UI, and doesn't rely on WinMob type pop-ups -- way to clunky. I imagine something like a hold over the text to bring up the magnifier, move to the correct position, then perform a clockwise loop with your thumb to show the start of the copy; move to the end, then another loop to delimit the end. This will copy the text to the clipboard. If you want to 'cut' just delete the still selected text. To paste, move to where you want to paste, hold to bring up the magnifier, then a reverse loop (i.e. anticlockwise) to paste into the existing text. Implementing something like this, and making it user friendly is not an easy thing to do.

As for multitasking, I'm hoping that Apple can bring some of the Snow Leopard tech to the iPhone, combined with the latest ARM Cortex and (nVidia??) GPU, a decent and efficient (note to WinMob!) service can be provided. To make multitasking easier, I would hope that Apple would extend the current iPhone dock -- make it more OS X for Mac-like. For example, a single click of the home button brings up the dock over the top of whatever app has focus -- you can then select from the 'docked' apps (running or not), and any apps running in the background -- much like OS X for Mac. A double click takes you to the home screen, while triple click (may be a bit of a hassle!) brings up the music menu (or whatever you have configured).

I also hope that iPhone 3.0 brings Spotlight and an iWork-to-go app (that integrates nicely with the new iWork cloud features).

That'll do it for me. Then I may actually pony up some money to O2 for a 3G iPhone (as opposed to an iPhone 3G!).

[emulator]

Originally Posted by sflocal

Really?? $9.99?? Does the rest of the world know this? I mean, this is groundbreaking news! All those millions of iPhone buyers had no clue they (we) were being ripped off.

Go buy your $9.99 Samsung and be content will you please?

that wasn't his point, and of course fanboys are not shortsighted and can take criticism.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by italiankid

Special announcement for copy & paste and MMS?
Glad Apple finally learned 'how to' do it... lol
These basic phone features are found on your 9.99$ Samsung.
I am expecting big news for 3.0
like Video LOL (again found on a phone in a 9.99$ range...
for a special announcement, it best be BIG.

For starters, Apple not including MMS was a choice (for whatever reason) not a technical hurdle. Copy and paste on the other hand is a technical hurdle. Copy and paste on a touchscreen phone with fingers as the input is not the same as a mouse or stylus on any other system.

PS: Those $9.99 phones you mention really don't cost $9.99 and they aren't touchscreen.

Originally Posted by astrosmash

There won't be any multitasking until they start shipping iPhones with twice the RAM and enable virtual memory. As it stands, there is barely enough memory to run Safari and Mail simultaneously. Actually, on current devices I'd say there isn't enough memory to run Safari satisfactorily; it takes very little to have it run out of memory and quit.

Safari does need more RAM, even just to keep pages from reloading. I often run Mail (which DLs in the background afte you leave it) while using Safari, listening to music and somethings having a timer going to remind me of something. Every now and then it essentially freezes. It'll clear itself up, but can take a few minutes when it happens.

Originally Posted by ascii

Multitasking with only 128M ram? They better be small tasks.

Maybe that's what they'll do - any bg task that exceeds a certain footprint gets automatically killed.

I suspect the next major iiPhone revision will get more RAM, a bett CPU and GPU, but I still don't think that background apps will be allowed. There are just too many of the current included apps that need to be sped up. Then you have issues with battery drain. The notification server is the way to go.

Originally Posted by 8CoreWhore

I've tried video through jailbreaking with "Cycorder". The quality, due to hardware limitations, is very poor.

Yet I mostly hear how great it is. If Apple released such a poor quality recorder the same people would be complaining about how bad it is. If the next iPhone gets Snow Leopard, 50-100% more RAM, better ARM and Tegra, then I don't see any technical reason why video recording won't happen.

Originally Posted by hiimamac

What a scam. Apple doesn't want flash. Google the "real reason there is no flash on the iPhone". Apple wants you to purchase they'd low quality definition of HD from their app store and not watch it free on hulu. Then of course there us the app store vs Adobe flash apps.

Yet Google owns one of the most popular Flash-based sites on the planet.

BTW, which version of Flash is available for jailbroken iPhones. Surely if Flash is capable of running on OS X and the 'only' reason it's not included is because Apple is preventing it, then it should be on jailbroken iPhones after nearly two years streaming Hulu perfectly. FYI, Hulu states that they require Flash 9.0 or better.

Originally Posted by theBigD23

I would like Task Syncing. I, as well a lot of people I know, use tasks all of the time.

I'd like this as well. I'd also like them to fix the weird ToDos mailbox in my Mobile Me account on my iPhone. It's not anywhere I can find, just the iPhone and I can't remove it.

Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01

This would surprise me. Double tap gesture is already booked by magnification.

Double-tap and hold seems the most logical solution to me.

Originally Posted by foljs

Yeah, because computers sure didn't multitask when only 128MB (and 64MB) where available.

Are you kidding me?

And programs used a lot less RAM back then too. These are apps built with a modern API. The Pre's apps are just localized webpages. Something that the iPhone will most likely will include since it will have the most up-to-date version of WebKit using HTML 5, which is required for this functionality.

Originally Posted by Voltaic

Only Apple can pull off giving thir users the most archaic and fundamental features in computing, and have them feel like they're getting something super-fantastic.
It's cut & Paste for crying out loud!!!
And you call "Italiankid" a douchebag? Better look in the mirror iVlad.

If it's so simple, how do you implement it? Do you not realize that the controls you use to cut and paste on your PC are not going to work on the iPhone? It's a lot more than creating a Clipboard.

[PatsFan83]

Originally Posted by RichyS

I imagine something like a hold over the text to bring up the magnifier, move to the correct position, then perform a clockwise loop with your thumb to show the start of the copy; move to the end, then another loop to delimit the end. This will copy the text to the clipboard. If you want to 'cut' just delete the still selected text. To paste, move to where you want to paste, hold to bring up the magnifier, then a reverse loop (i.e. anticlockwise) to paste into the existing text. Implementing something like this, and making it user friendly is not an easy thing to do.

How do you bring up the magnifier on a web page? I imagine Apple to incorporate some gestures, such as double tap with two fingers. The clockwise gesture would work well.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by RichyS

I think people are too quick to state that cut'n'paste is easy.

While technically it isn't very difficult to write some code to implement the feature, just take a moment to think how it may be done? How is it done on existing phones? It's usually pretty convoluted. For the $9.99 Samsung chap above, if that c'n'p is in any way as tricky as it is on my SE W910, then I can bet you don't use it very much. I know I hardly ever do.

[...]

New poster and a well thought out post. Welcome to AI! If you haven't seen this video, I recommend it as it does a fantastic job of detailing how Apple might implement copy/paste and what it must overcome to do so. Despite the posters that think it's a cake walk, this video clearly points out the difficulties yet it's made by the developer(s) that first brought an application with copy/paste to the iPhone.

• http://magicpad.proximi.com/video.php

[bloggerblog]

Originally Posted by steviet02

You might find it unnecessary, but quitting Pandora to go look something up on the web is annoying. And the 'old argument' about buggy 3rd party SW is BS, you don't know what you're talking about. If they had some foresight into this they would have put in enough RAM to at least run their own apps without crashing, which Safari does quite frequently under heavy use.

Apple apparently cannot build a push data container because they are months late with that promise. My guess is that they realized this was not a great approach, I would not be surprised to see them scrap that idea.

First Safari does not run in the background and yes it does sometimes crash, I did not claim Apple to be prone to crashes, however bad code should be expected from 3rd party developers since Apple opened the App Store to virtually everyone.

Currently only the necessary apps run in the background such as: Calendar, Mail, Clock, and Phone. The only ones that seems to run in full-code are the Phone app, and the Clock app if an Alarm was set, otherwise all other apps run in partial code.

I also use Pandora and I can't imagine the iPhone playing audio while browsing the internet on the same 3G network. How about if I had multiple apps running in the background, how responsive will the device become?

Eventually when the iPhone becomes more powerful and can handle more RAM, I'd also expect it to be able to carryout more desktop like features but not in the current 2G and 3G models.

I could be wrong, but these are my thoughts.

[lakorai]

My HTC Touch Pro (sprint) has background app capability

it can do decent quality video

it had copy and paste when Windows Mobile 5.0 was available

It has an accelerometer

I CAN RUN BACKGROUND APPS

It had Exchange support way before the iPhone did

THE BATTERY IS NOT SOLDERED or hard to replace

It uses standard USB 2.0 for charging, syncing etc

IT HAS A KEYBOARD

ITS NOT STUCK TO JUST AT&T

I'M not paying a "apple tax" for apple to make free margin off the the carrier's monthly plans (Only apple does this BTW)

I'm not paying close to $100 a month for 500 minutes, text messaging etc

I can use the SERO SPrint plan with my Touch Pro =)

I CAN GET INSURANCE FROM LOCKLINE for it (Come on APple! WTF? When will you/AT&T allow insurance)

AT&T's service sucks (not saying Sprint's is that great either, but I'm on a SERO Pla n so I don't care lol)

[bloggerblog]

One feature which I'm also longing for is the ability to check my Call-History, or browse my Voice-Mail while on the phone.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by bloggerblog

One feature which I'm also longing for is the ability to check my Call-History, or browse my Voice-Mail while on the phone.

Those are great ideas! Adding to them...

— I'd like to be able to record the audio from any given phone call at any time that I choose.

— I'd like to be able to sync VMs back to iTunes (as well as the recorded phone calls).

— I'd like to be able to select and play a VM to another person while I'm talking to them (and forward my VMs, at least to other iPhone users if the codec is an issue).

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by lakorai

My HTC Touch Pro (sprint) has background app capability

it can do decent quality video

it had copy and paste when Windows Mobile 5.0 was available

It has an accelerometer

I CAN RUN BACKGROUND APPS

It had Exchange support way before the iPhone did

THE BATTERY IS NOT SOLDERED or hard to replace

It uses standard USB 2.0 for charging, syncing etc

IT HAS A KEYBOARD

ITS NOT STUCK TO JUST AT&T

I'M not paying a "apple tax" for apple to make free margin off the the carrier's monthly plans (Only apple does this BTW)

I'm not paying close to $100 a month for 500 minutes, text messaging etc

I can use the SERO SPrint plan with my Touch Pro =)

I CAN GET INSURANCE FROM LOCKLINE for it (Come on APple! WTF? When will you/AT&T allow insurance)

AT&T's service sucks (not saying Sprint's is that great either, but I'm on a SERO Pla n so I don't care lol)

No no no... Aww come on... You can't just recopy the Troll talking points! You have got to get creative, make it seem like it's actually your opinion you're spewing.

Better be careful or you're gonna get your troll license revoked!

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Double-tap and hold seems the most logical solution to me.

I came to similar conclusion. Here goes my guess.
The selection gesture will be tap-and-hold. There will be clearer distinction between selection and possible dialog call (note, picture is indeed selected now first, when copied from the web, then the dialog appears). Copy-paste operations will be triggered either by dialog buttons, or by swipe gestures.
And the number of hold downs will determine what is selected: section-sentence-word-some characters under lens...

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by bloggerblog

browse my Voice-Mail while on the phone.

As CoverFlow? No problem at all. Far more feasible, than text selection.

[arteckx]

Originally Posted by foljs

Yeah, because computers sure didn't multitask when only 128MB (and 64MB) where available.

Are you kidding me?

That brings back memories of my old 400MHz AMD K6 with 64MB RAM. I haven't heard someone mention 64MB for total system memory in a long time (no surprise).

It was running Windows ME and at any given time, the minimum I had open was Internet Explorer, AIM, Word, Notepad, and several images in Photoshop. Normally, much more than that, and that didn't even feel slow.

I don't have a real point here though. Just a memory. The experience would probably feel unbearable with today's expectations.