Apple engineer explains why the first iPhone didn’t have copy and paste

Apple engineer explains why the first iPhone didn’t have copy and paste

Apple launched the first-generation iPhone 15 years in the past, and there was no copy and paste perform at the moment. Now, former Apple software program engineer and designer, Ken Kocienda has revealed the specifics. Kocienda joined Apple in 2001 and is among the key engineers behind the iPhone. Previous to growing the iPhone, Kocienda labored on the unique crew for the Safari browser, which made him instrumental within the improvement of the first-generation iPhone.

Kocienda’s clarification for why the first-generation iPhone didn’t have a copy-and-paste function was easy: there was no time for improvementIn line with him, the crew was busy growing the iPhone’s digital keyboard and its autocorrection system. After the launch of the primary iPhone, Kocienda and his crew lastly determined to develop a replica and paste possibility, however it nonetheless took some time to lastly land.

Copying and pasting – an important function

Kocienda mentioned he got here up with the thought of ​​a “textual content magnifying glass” that lets customers know precisely the place they’re pointing their textual content cursor. This function is essential for copying and pasting. Nonetheless, even with the traditional digital magnifying glass, the cursor would nonetheless transfer between characters. This principally occurs when the person takes their finger off the display resulting from pure jitter. Thus, on the time, the function was unreliable.

For this goal, Kocienda has developed a “contact historical past” for textual content enhancing solely. After the finger leaves the display, the system robotically detects the place of the person’s finger inside milliseconds of the final contact, permitting the cursor to remain the place the person actually desires it. One other attention-grabbing element of the iPhone’s textual content enter system is that all styled textual content was initially based mostly on WebKit. Because of this when an app makes use of a customized font, it mainly shows a tiny internet web page to render the textual content. When textual content isn’t in edit mode, they show a static picture of its content material.

The copy and paste perform was launched in 2009 as a brand new function of iPhone OS 3.zero and is preinstalled on the iPhone 3GS by default. Apple even created a TV advert on the time to spotlight the brand new function.