Next iPhone software update to deliver Safari, App Store tweaks - Page 2

There's more people than you think asking for it, a lot more. Sure I just plucked 90% out of the air. But it's a big enough %, and a simple enough thing to solved with software that it should be done.

It's advertising

No, I don't agree that's the reason they did it. If you use your iPhone you have to reach across the screen every time you want to make a search, when using Safari, which is why they did this. And entering an address you can still touch the same location as you did before this change. This is not a visual change, it's a UI change, to make ti easier to use.

Safari Google searched should go to a more mobile version of Google though.

Fair enough but every time you use it, Apple gets a commision from Google. If they didn't want to advertise Google they would have said 'Search', but maybe they wanted it to look more like the desktop version which is also advertising IMO.


m

Advertising or not, the problem (misunderstanding), I think, is coming from the fact that the AI article is calling it the "Google search field". It simply is a search field. You can go into Settings and change your default search engine to Yahoo and the field will then say 'Yahoo'. Apple is simply showing you which search engine you are using.

Good point. The default browser search engine preference IS a hot legal issue with big dollar implications because most people don't change it. When they get a new computer, they open up whatever browser they were given and start using it.

I'm a more or less happy 1.x iPhone owner, and I'm not going to upgrade until they add copy and paste. Its absolutely ridiculous that I can't copy a bit of text out of an email and paste it into a note, or vise versa. I don't need 100 flashlight programs. I don't need video games. I don't need 3G. Safari works OK as it is. Please Apple...

I give a damn!!! I miss this feature at least once a week. Its really one of the few things that I find myself saying "Why the heck can't I do this?!" about.

Very common uses:
wanting to do a google search on some text on a web page that I'm viewing.
wanting to copy some text out of one email into the response (but not the entire thing).
wanting to save a snippet of an email into a note.
wanting to do a google search on something I typed into a note.
wanting to copy a bit of a note back into an email message.
wanting to copy an address off a webpage and look it up in google-maps.

etc.

Also, in notes, it doesn't do the "auto phone number detection" thing, so if you type a phone number into notes, there's no way to have the phone dial it for you. WTF? Sometimes also, the phone number detection gets confused in Safari if the number isn't formatted as expected. So, it would be nice to be able to copy and paste the number back into the keypad app.

Do you actually use your iPhone? I don't see how anyone could not want to do these things?

And don't forget, once you get the info into that note, you CANNOT
- sync it to your Mac/PC
- search for it, or any info in the note

Well, if you're willing to shell out $20 you can sync notes to your Mac.
See: http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/
Also nice for backing up SMS message histories.
(Still, ridiculous that you have to purchase this as an add-on. Should be built-in functionality.)

I agree about searching... It would be definitely handy if there was an "iPhone spotlight" feature... though, not as high up my list as copy/paste.

While I'm dreaming: Why the heck can't I sync my iPhone to my Mac through bluetooth? I re-load music and videos onto the thing about once a month. I would like to sync my contacts and calendar data on a daily basis. Wires are a drag. (I charge the battery at work. My contacts are calendar live at home.) And no, I'm not subscribing to MobileMe just for this functionality.

the iphone is a wonderful device, but the lack of copy/paste is unacceptable!

receiving somebody's phone number in an email and having to write it on a scrap of paper, then opening contacts and typing it in... pathetic!

Why does the iPhone screenshot show a Flash ad running? The ad ("A phone is only as good") in the upper left corner is a Flash ad on AppleInsider. Always. Right?

But I can't explain why it's running in 2.1. On my iPhone running 2.1, I get the little question mark box in the middle.

A gross workaround for this particular situation: Use the "phone number detection" feature to dial the number, then immediately hang up (before it connects). Then use the "recent" list to save the number into a contact.

How's that for "ease of use!"

i appreciate your suggestion, but i found an easier workaround: i read the number out aloud often enough for my parrot to memorize the number, then quickly switch to contacts and let the parrot dictate.

same for forwarding excerpts of emails, and for searching street names on google maps

hope this still works when OS2.2 is released, it might be a little close to an application that apple was planning to develop for iwork

Well I'm sure you could say 1 % of iphone users can be a "more people".

I actually do use the device and it's not that big of deal, the average user doesn't give a damn about it, if it was such a dealbreaker as it is made out to be the iphone wouldn't be selling the amount that it is.

so, what might the "average users" be doing with their iphone?
just about everybody I know who owns and uses the iphone complains about this. for me it's a nightmare, my desk and travel bag is full of scraps of paper with addresses and phone numbers.
I was watching a business man at paris airport 2 days ago, copying stuff onto a paper napkin, then retyping it into his iphone, swearing under his breath...

Forwarding a few lines of an email to a 3rd person - the rest of the email is nobody else's business - is tedious, deleting the rest of a long email word by word is an idiotic task.

if it's no big deal for you, how do you - for example - add a phone number (that's been emailed to you) to your contacts?

and have you found a way of inserting an address into google maps without memorizing it or writing it on a piece of paper? in foreign countries the streetnames are often not easy to memorize, and it is 2008, why should I have to memorize addresses that have been mailed to me?

for a device as modern and expensive as the iphone this is pretty pathetic.

i am sure apple will come up with this, hopefully sooner rather than later, but i don't give d**** about where the google bar is, or whether the appstore looks nicer, i need to stop carrying pen and paper in order to make use of the iphone.

I bought my device a few weeks ago, confident that this would be implemented in OS2.1...

best regards
-d

That's... a really good point. They must have been static images though.

Dude the average person doesn't give a damn about the copy and paste, sure they may need it but it's not on far up on a big list of features that they need. If copy and paste was such a big deal as people make it up to be, iphones wouldn't be selling because everybody would be demanding it and overlooking the iphone for that. I can bet you that if Apple was to implement copy and paste today the average person buying the phone wouldn't even notice it and there wouldn't be some big jump in sales because of copy and paste. Iphone is not the only phone without copy and paste, there are other more expensive phones that don't have copy and paste.

dude i suppose you must be right... i had presumed i am an average person, hoping to use the phone in an average way; seems i must be an extraordinary person

now i am wondering what those millions of average people are doing with their phones...? getting pleasure from slighty adjusted google placement in safari?
oh well...
have a nice evening,
best,
-d

An ad like this you mean?



That's not a flash ad, AI must have some nifty way of displaying a static ad in place of the flash one when an iPhone is visiting. Look at the time, I'm off to bed.

Mine says Inquisitor.

The problem with copy and paste is the technical end of it and Apple clearly isn't willing to do it half-assed. Everyone focuses on the UI which is the easy part. The hard part is what goes on the background (which I elaborate on in my tech blog if I may pimp it here. ). Apple has a good history of doing copy-and-paste better than anyone else. They do it right in OS X and no doubt the iPhone will follow that tradition. Apple could rush the implementation of copy-and-paste and end up doing it badly which, IMO, is worse than not having it at all.

So be patient. When it arrives, it will beat the living daylights out of whatever copy-and-paste implementation other smart phones have.

Actually, reading just in this thread the number of people (me included) who seems to think this is a big deal appears to far outnumber those that think it's not.
I have two friends with iPhones, and both complain about this issue all the time. (People who use it for more than just multimedia, you know, grown ups..)

Addy

Does iPhone play an animated image? That might be how it looks like it's a flash ad when it's not. I guess it seems ignorant of me, I just don't know, I don't remember seeing one.

I've seen web code that shows a static image that will be replaced with an FLV file, without refreshing the page, once clicked. I'm guessing it's a JS, but it could be an aspect of HTML5. I'll see if I can find something, as I could be wrong since it was my focus at the time.

Huh. Copy/Paste and MMS would be great. But for starters I would just like it to notify me when I have new emails while it is asleep. You know, like it used to before 2.1.....

This weekend I found out how actually useless the iPhone is as a phone.

My DSL connection went down. Well, because Apple does not allow a full BT stack and has crippled this so-called Smartphone, I was forced to go out and purchase a phone that had BT, HSDPA and the ability to tether to my Mac.

After 3 mins set up, I was up and running. I bought a Nokia N82 and this thing is amazing. I only wish I had bought the N96 but it was not available at the moment. For sure the iPhone will be seeing less and less duty as a phone and more time as an iPod. I am completely underwhelmed by the iPhone and the crappy restrictions Apple has placed on it, and please do not give me the "oh the software is so great" speech. Safari is almost useless because of the crashes, VoIP apps only work if wifi is in the area, and on and on. My money would have been better spent on an iPod which I am leaning towards getting and dumping this iPod with phone POS as soon as possible.

I for one would like to see iPhoto events sync'd to the iPhone. Scrolling through the bland "Last 12 Months" is major ball ache.

Cheers

Jan

A workaround is to setup albums in iPhoto so those can synced.

I'd like an iPhoto update make smart use of the location data that is being saved. Having to grab the info from the photo then go to a website to convert it so Google Maps can read it is a bit of a pain.

Yeah I realise this, but the solution is less than ideal. Using the standard iPhoto events would be much easier

On the Maps front, Street view is coming to the phone, maybe some kind of integration with the library on the phone will happen too...

Jan

My theory on why cut/copy/paste isn't implemented...

Two reasons:
1: It isn't as high priority as other features that the majority of users want
2: Apple wants to make damn sure they get it right the first time around.

Once features/functionality/interaction-techniques are introduced, it is impossible to remove them without a massive public outcry. Apple has historically done a good job of not falling into this trap. Their software starts out light on features and additional ones are only added when they've been perfectly though out. No feature bullet point mongering.

The alternative is to roll everything out in a hurry, and then release alternate/improved versions later on. The problem with this is you end up with a huge steaming pile of code and interaction techniques to support. Development becomes much more difficult when there are multiple versions of everything. Remind you of any particular OS or business package?

For instance, consider multiple home screens and easy home screen customization. People were clamoring for it from day one. Apple's eventual implementation exceeded most people's expectations. The hold and wait for jiggly icons seems so intuitive now. But it wouldn't have been the solution we ended up with if apple had rushed the implementation. We would have ended up with an additional button on the screen along with some other more intrusive indicator of the edit state.

Multi-touch interfaces are still quite new. We don't have all the answers yet and unfortunately that means that sometimes the short-term solution is neglected. It is neglected so that the platform and GUI aren't saddled with horrible interface constructs.

I'd prefer to wait on CCP so that it is done right in this here multi-touch land we now live in.