3G Copy & Paste, Turn-by-Turn GPS, Office Suites A-OK with Apple

by Eric March on July 14, 2008 at 8:15 pm

Where’s copy & paste? Why doesn’t the iPhone have copy & paste? There’s no copy & paste! I can has copy & paste?

iPhone and Touch users the world over have been lamenting the lack of copy & paste functionality in the operating system since the iPhone debuted more than a year ago, and with each new firmware update, people looked on in anticipation for the addition of the feature, only to be disappointed once again. Not even 2.0 has it. And speaking of 2.0, what’s the deal with Google Maps and the GPS? Where’s TomTom? And how ’bout some productivity suites, huh? Word processor? Spreadsheet? Ringing any bells?

To finally, at long last, get some solid, unambiguous answers to these questions, AppScout managed to snag some face time with Apple’s talking product head Greg Joswiak so we could put these issues to bed once and for all.

Turn-by-turn directions? Greg says Apple is all for them, but obliquely cites “complicated issues” that prevent them from being written right now, but “It will evolve. I think our developers will amaze us.” In other words, the SDK doesn’t have the necessary chutzpah yet, but they’re working on it.

Office suites? Greg is cool with that, uh … but. “There’s no cross-application file structure,” he said, which does actually make a lot of sense. Apps accessing data from other apps is a sticky issue with Apple, is a little too much like poking holes in their development garden. Like the consideration given to the SDK’s restrictions in the first place, Apple has to approach this concept cautiously in order to maintain solid system integrity and tight security while still allowing apps enough elbow room to mingle amongst themselves. It is on the agenda, though.

Now, what about that damned copy & paste?! Easy tiger. It’s coming. Apple has been working from a priority playbook here, implementing what they deemed were the most important additions, changes and fixes as they went. Copy & paste has always been in there, it’s just been lower on the priority list than everything that has so far come before it. So where exactly is it in grand order of The Steve’s universe? Is it near the top or will we have to wait ’til they’ve gotten all the minutae out of the way before we’ll be blessed with a clipboard? Unfortunately, we have no idea, so we’re just going to go with the proven, patented RSN™ and redirect all further questions to the passing custodian while we duck out the back.

(via AppScout)