Former Apple employee Ken Kocienda explained that the lack of copy and paste functionality in the first version of the iPhone smartphone was due to a lack of time on the development team.
The engineer explained that the entire team was focused on developing the virtual keyboard and auto-correction system on the first iPhone, so work on other features remained in the background, adding: “In short, Apple engineers did not have time to apply copy and paste on the first iPhone.”
After the launch of the first iPhone, Kocienda and his team decided to work on copy and paste options as well. However, the implementation of the function took place in the third version of the iPhone operating system. The engineer explains that he came up with the “text magnifier” to let users know exactly where they are pointing the text cursor.
New feature launched with iPhone OS 3.0
This was crucial for copying and pasting. However, even with the classic virtual magnifying glass, the cursor would move between characters after the user lifted their finger from the screen due to natural shaking.
Kocienda had to develop a “touch history log” for text editing only. Thus, after the finger is removed from the screen, the position of the user’s finger is automatically determined in milliseconds after the last touch, allowing the cursor to stay where the user wants.
The copy and paste feature was introduced in 2009 with iPhone OS 3.0, which came pre-installed on the iPhone 3GS. Back then, Apple even released an ad highlighting the new feature.
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