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[feature] Copy-and-Paste still missing in iPhone; Blame Apple’s Obsessive Nature

With the release of Apple’s new iPhone 3G only 3 full days away, the industry is gearing up for another blockbuster release, only this time… It’s Global. Apple has set a goal for itself to sell 10 million handsets by the end of this calendar year and analysts have been clamoring that Apple will shatter this goal. New features such as Real GPS, Microsoft Exchange Support and the much anticipated demanded 3G network support, make iPhone 3G perfectly positioned to demolish its competitors and further revolutionize the mobile phone industry. With complex applications, features and revolutionary input gestures, why was a feature as seemingly simple as copy-and-paste absent from the first generation iPhone? And more importantly, why is it going to be absent from the second generation iPhone 3G?

Apple has long been known to be a very obsessive company. A Steve Jobs quote can pretty much sum up the company’s philosophical approach to a very streamlined (and rather minimal) product line; “We don’t get the chance to do many things in life, so every one of them should be great.” This fundamental outlook on life from Jobs has carried over into the way Apple does business and into the rate in which they release new products.

Many of Apple’s competitors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony, have a slew of products from which you can choose. They use highly complicated names for their computers such as the C700T, dv6700z and D400 to make extra sure you get confused while finding that perfect product. Apple on the other hand, gives you clear-cut choices such as the iMac, Macbook, Mac Pro, or Mac mini. By being so obsessively neurotic about (every possible millimeter of) each product they release, Apple consistently sets itself apart from the competition.

The problem is, that while this highly neurotic obsession puts Apple and its products on top of the industry, it also creates rather large road-bumps for the company to get over. Sometimes, it seems like all the negative press and harsh criticism they receive could have easily been avoided through simple development. If Apple can develop apps like Visual Voicemail, iPhone Safari, the Mail App, iTunes Store, App Store and the entire iPhone SDK, why can’t we get a simple picture sending application, or some sort of copy-and-paste integration into the typing sections of each app? About a week ago, a friend of mine got her iPhone stolen. While I was playing around with her temporary Nokia replacement, things such as sending pictures seemed like a distant memory to me. For a company so hell-bent on perfecting that “User Experience” — Apple seems to leave out interaction that pretty much all consumers are used to, have accepted, and react well with.

At first I hoped that Apple was secretly working on a picture sending application for the iPhone that would “blow everything else away” with a fruitful Yahoo/Flickr partnership. Or that copy-and-paste would be announced with an iPhone optimized Word Processing application that Apple had been working on for years (but wasn’t ready or something). It makes sense that a company so involved with every aspect of their hardware and software, would take simple features like sending pictures and copy-and-paste and “re-invent them.” But nothing has been announced. In fact, the company hasn’t really even addressed these as missing features! So, what gives? It’s been over a year and still nothing? Well, the answer is a rather tricky yet understandable hurdle that the company is working to get over.

Interface Pattern Inconsistencies are the major culprit here. I have to ignore the risk of sounding too technical because the reasoning behind these missing features is in fact, very technical.

Intro to User Interface Consistency Patterns

Taking extremely high-level technology and making it accessible to everyone, is one of Apple’s core beliefs. A major draw for consumers and new Apple switchers is the shiny interface that Apple develops into every piece of software it releases. As a devoted Apple user, I couldn’t imagine spending so much time inside of an Operating System and having it look, or worse behave, like it was somebody’s after-thought. The interface is so important to Apple, that they give absolutely no leniency to anybody developing software for the platform. The same goes for the iPhone. One could argue that this is the main reason Adobe’s Flash hasn’t yet made it to the iPhone. With Adobe pushing hard for Flash’s default interface components throughout the web, Apple is pushing hard to control its interface elements with the release of the iPhone SDK. A standard set of buttons, modules, widgets, scrollers and software interface elements have been built right into the SDK for developers to use. This is done to ensure a seamless user experience for the end-user. Imagine going from application to application, and having each one use a completely different set of components for the buttons and elements on the screen — not my idea of a good experience.

While Apple is hard at work developing the iPhone interface, certain patterns emerge. The natural way your hand moves or reacts from any given position becomes apparent over time. This of course, plays off of the interface you are using. 



Interface Pattern Consistency Test

Let’s do a little test as an example — Follow the steps below.

1. Grab an iPhone or iPod touch and wake it up with your right hand.

2. Unlock it with your right thumb.

3. Hit the Phone icon with your right thumb.

4. The natural progression in interaction is to scroll through your contacts or recent calls with your thumb,
which at this point is hovering over the screen.

This series of miniature events are called Interface Pattern Consistencies. This is what helps cement new user input methods and ways of interaction, that a mass amount of consumers (essentially the world) will be able to easily adapt and learn how to naturally use. If inconsistent patterns emerge during Apple’s research and development, then it’s safe to say that we as end-users will never see them. So, Interface Pattern Inconsistencies are the reason that current iPhone software is lacking copy-and-paste.

It has been reported that Apple has not been able to finalize the implementation of copy and paste into any application, let alone as a standard method on the iPhone. There have been hacks that the community has developed in lieu of these missing features, but to no surprise they are missing that genuine Apple polish. Copy-and-paste will not be an application dependent feature, it will be a standard across the iPhone development platform. Only when Apple reaches a finalized integration of the feature they are happy with, will we as end-users experience it in our handsets.