Microsoft cuts out paste
Windows Phone 7 Series won't be able to cut and paste, as Microsoft continues to create something with all the limitations of the iPhone and little of the charm. Microsoft has confirmed comments made at MIX10 that Windows Phone 7 Series devices won't be able to cut and paste between applications - apparently users don't want it …
What about when Micro$haft send you a 16 digit activation code for a piece of software/phone app via email?
I agree.
I am amazed that they assume that nobody will need it because of other functionality. Cut and paste is as old as the windowed environment but microsoft "know" better.
Idiots.
I think cut/copy and paste is older than the windowed environment seeing I remember one of my old ass word processors that came out before windows had it. Can't remember its name for the life of me though. Hell I think it was on the C-64
You're right. Copy and paste functionality existed on my TI-99/4a in 1982 in the TI-Writer word processing application. This was a text-only application that used the TI's function keys to copy and paste text.
"Micro$haft" jeez your so hip and the bozo bit is now flipped on you.
Such a shame, I was really looking forward to the 7 phones after the announcement, but all the news since the launch is bad, bad, bad. Can't do this, can't do that.
When's Maemo 6 due?
First version's out later this year, I believe. And N900 users get a backported update to it! Woot!
It isn't... Maemo and Moblin merged last week- Meego is their latest offing. El Reg has some articles on here somewhere...
Paris cos I need her glasses *mumble grumble*
I mean, I've got a 1st gen 2g iPhone and I didn't really miss cut and paste and just thought all the people slagging off the iPhone for not having cut & paste would have slagged off the iPhone regardless of what feature it didn't have that they thought was essential.
I now use the cut and paste facility quite extensivley and I wonder how the original phone could have been allowed to be released without this feature and why Apple were not slagged off more for not having cut & paste (OK, the slagging was quite severe!).
Just goes to show, you don know what you are missing until a common computer feature turns up in your phone OS update!
Not a raving fanboi, only own the iPhone, don't really rate the PC's because I was given a 1st gen iMac from work which I hated with a vengence but I do know this, I will never own a phone from any other manufacturer :-) (wife just got a Motorola Dext Blur thing and it looks nice but battery life sucks, screen sensitivity is awful and navigation is counter intuitive)
Apple took their sweet time implementing cut and paste, but in the end they did it right. It works well and it's quick. I use it a lot now, just about every day: even if it's just to copy some text I want to paste into the browser search field.
I was looking at Android phones recently to see if one could be a possible alternative to the iPhone when I'm ready to upgrade next (I'm waiting for this year's iPhone refresh) and got a friend who has a Hero to show me its cut and paste. What a long winded nasty mess!
Seriously. It's turning into a bit of a catastrophe. It's like they're copying every single one of Apple's mistakes and lacking most of the advantages.
To screw it up you'd have to make it worse than it already is - a logical impossibility.
Copy and paste HAS to be in the "business" edition, can you imagine working on Word and Excel documents without it???
So avoid the basic consumer version then ......
Man, i really, really appreciate 6.5.5 now!
On my Nexus One that is. Pretty useful, even when you're not using things like an ssh client, server monitors, etc.
One thing I wish Android would mimic would be the method of showing a magnifying glass so you can finely select the cursor position with your finger rather than using the roller/d-pad. It's a great feature on the iPhone, probably been patented though.
But on the other points raised in this article, at least now Android makes it easy to write native code that calls out to OpenGL, games being the single most popular type of app on consumer mobile phones. It looks like Microsoft haven't learnt that lesson. Is it possible they nailed down the Windows 7 Mobile feature set somewhere before whenever iPhone OS 2.0 was?
I quite like Windows Mobile (only because of the software I need on my work phone) and when I first saw Windows Phone 7, I wasn't too keen on the interface but chose to reserve judgment until I tried it out.
Then came the announcement that my HD2 won't be getting the upgrade to the new OS. Pity... but OK. The hardware restrictions seem a bit much, but no matter.
Now one of the most basic - and most used by me - functions is getting the chop? I am liking this new offering less and less.
I fear I may eventually have to switch to something less restrictive... <cough>Android<cough>
I like windows phones, I've had one for a number of years, and my current HTC diamond works really well.
The iphone has loads of advantages over the current windows mobile, but Microsoft seem to be wanting to copy the disadvantages.
Copy and paste has been in the OS all the time I've used it (since 2002). Anybody who's ever had a new windows mobile device will be familiar with the startup tuition wizard that teaches you how to copy and paste an event in your calendar.
The Nokia 9000 onwards all had cut 'n' paste.
DOS apps had cut 'n' paste.
ICL mainframes from the 70's had cut 'n' paste.
Unfortunately the microsoft time machine only goes backwards.
DOS certainly didn't let you cut and paste between applications, as you could only run one at a time, and i'd be surprised if an ICL mainframe did too.
There's nothing that specifically says it wont allow copy/paste within an application.
"DOS certainly didn't let you cut and paste between applications, as you could only run one at a time, and i'd be surprised if an ICL mainframe did too."
My experience is that you copy the piece of text you want (using the cursor keys and PF keys natch) and then stop the application and start the new application, ready for pasting.
If it's possible on mainframes from the 70s, it should be possible on a phone - one of them is more advanced than the other, surely?
Is there one of those "in this release" caveats on that ?
Hell, maybe MS just realised that Copy/Paste on the iPhone sucks like a vaccum and decided they couldn't do any better
Or maybe, just maybe, MS are genuinely going to replay every single step out of Apples iPhone design and marketing strategies over the lifetime of the product. If nothing else that will certainly be amusing to watch.
cut and paste on the iphone is completely reasonable.
on the other hand, the only thing microsoft will ever release that doesn't suck will be a vacuum cleaner.
surely that would be the first item to both suck and blow at the same time
It isn't, it's a complete pain in the arse, thanks.
"on the other hand, the only thing microsoft will ever release that doesn't suck will be a vacuum cleaner."
Oh I see, a blinkered fanboi, oh well.
They will make a killing after the next AEE...
"surely that would be the first item to both suck and blow at the same time"
Unless you count Vista etc etc
The Other Steve wrote: "It isn't, it's a complete pain in the arse, thanks."
It isn't, it's usable and FAR more usable than not having cut&paste at all...
>"on the other hand, the only thing microsoft will ever release that doesn't suck will be a
> vacuum cleaner."
"Oh I see, a blinkered fanboi, oh well."
Oh, I see, someone without any sense of humour, oh well :)
When the iPhone came out, the phrase I heard often was "Christ, even Windows Mobile can do cut and paste!"
Oooh dear...
I slagged the iPhone for not having something my staple Symbian based platform of choice has had for years and years - yet the more I think about it... I can't remember the last time I used C&P. Even for SSH, browsing the web etc... My Nokia's in recent years detect phone numbers, URL's and email addresses and provides context when selected such as to navigate / save to bookmark for URL's, add as a contact or call for number etc...
Yet before that I never used C&P anyway...
Was big on getting a WP7 handset at launch, but I'm more likely to hold off until the reviews are out I think. If MS promised the next release or two post RTM of the first one will be accessible and free then I'd jump straight onboard - but I'm not committing until I know I can get future enhancements I think...
I thought the stuff yesterday was great for the demise of the win 7 phone OS. It just gets better, what next?
No USB support as blue tooth is the way forward?
No MMS, because like Nokia with the N900, some tupid moron decides that EVERYONE wants to upload photos instead of sending them to a friend. Don't they?
They can copy Apple all they want, it is an MS product, so it will need an anti virus to run all the time just to be reasonably safe. And it won't like open source, won't like plug and play to anything other than windows 7 etc etc.
I love it, I couldn't write the lunacy of Ballmer any better that his current media gaffs over win 7 phones.
We need a new icon, somewhow FAIL just doesn't do it.
"it is an MS product, so it will need an anti virus to run all the time just to be reasonably safe."
Not if apps have to be signed in the same way as as the iPhone's. And if all code is managed rather than native, the likelihood of successful exploitation of existing apps is lowered significantly.
Not gone altogether, but the iPhone, which does allow native code (and ObjC allows you to do all the stupid things you can do in C by virtue of being a strict superset) seems to have been (so far) remarkably resilient to that type of pwnage considering the number of units deployed and the likely demographic of the user base.
When you build things by committee it's not unusual to end up with products that satisfy nobody.
Yet with Orwellian rationalization, the idiom "nobody's perfect" leads to RTM.
Over there where GSM is the accepted standard I can see why the iPhone is so popular, but over here in the states CDMA/EV-DO has over twice the coverage (e.g. an iPhone has 'no signal' within 5 miles of my home in any direction).
Still, most of the offerings from Samsung (I think they're Java/J2ME) that are offered by the CDMA carriers (e.g. Sprint, Verizon, et al) don't have copy/paste either.
Other universal features I'd like to see adopted by all manufacturers:
When I'm in the browser, being able to dispatch a text to someone with the URL of the site I'm currently viewing, instead of having to open the texting app and manually type in the URL (since, of course, there is no copy/paste).
Other keyboard layouts besides QWERTY on touch screens... if we have to type with our thumbs, at least put the most-used letters next to each other.
If a stylus is included, ALWAYS provide a storage slot/hole for it on the device.
Being able to edit the URLs of bookmarks, not just their titles.
"Over there where GSM is the accepted standard" where "over there" means the rest of the world excluding the USA?
Darn that Global System for Mobiles, we didn't invent it so we'll do our best to ignore it until it goes away.
We even managed to get the whole of Europe to work on the same 3G frequencies too.
Several US carriers implement GSM and UMTS, just they tend to use weird frequencies because other frequencies are already allocated. Hence the reason for quad band phones which can cope with the various frequencies used in the US and other parts of the world.
I use 64+ character scrambled eggs passwords for my WPA2 WiFi networks.
Before copy and paste, adding an iPhone to one of these networks was a nightmare, to put it mildly.
They can't implement it for some technical reason, and are trying a little Revlon Lip Gloss on the porker.
Who are these dumbass "users who don't want it"? WTF is wrong with these retards, and where on earth did MS manage to find such drooling cretins?
Or maybe they don't exist, and MS are being stupid? Nah, couldn't be
in one of their board meetings!
Windows Phone 7 Series is as ridiculous as it's name.
"Everyone is desperate to ape Apple's success, but no one's learning from its mistakes"
Excuse me ... bit of a rant maybe? Lots of companies have learnt from Apple's mistakes, including Apple.
Look at the Nokia N900 for example. Copy and Paste to your hearts content. ;-) And true FULL HTML/JS browsing in FireFox. And it runs on Linux. And you have root access - so you can do what you want and install what you want, without breaking the warranty. Perfecto.
http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/
But when I do I really, really want it; would be incredibly frustrating not to have it.
Clunky or fiddly I could understand on a touch phone but absent is just not good enough.
but Microsoft really do seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on this. All the stuff about this new phone OS sounded OK when they announced it and its only since they started to fill in the gaps that the bad stuff has come out.
Buy it now, because in the future we will fix these things that suck! What ? Oh yes we'll charge you for the upgrade.
They generally take (at least) three releases of something to get anywhere near a decent level of functionality because they're usually rushing to market to keep up with some competitor or other. Their first release is often just a place-holder to let people know that they are in a particular market. Windows itself is a perfect example of this. Windows Phone 9 Series will probably be reasonably featureful but if they leave it until then, they won't have any presence in a market that they're already playing serious catch up in.
One of the things that Apple have got bang on right with the iPhone is that you get OS updates for free. MS have never, ever, done this before with their OSes, but then until the iPhone, neither had Apple. If MS are just directly ripping off Apple's business model, it is to be hoped that they incorporate this part of it, because one of the most annoying things about WinMo was never being able to get upgrades without using a pirate ROM.
That's problematic for Microsoft phones for a start - they aren't actually Microsoft's phones are they? They're HTC's or HP's or whoevers.
HTC did actually produce free, legal upgrades for at least some of their phones mind you, but a lot of phone carriers didn't release the upgrades that HTC had produced to their customers.
"That's problematic for Microsoft phones for a start - they aren't actually Microsoft's phones are they?"
Well, no, quite. It's partly an OEM problem, and partly a carrier problem, and partly because the WInMo OEM licensing model is, well, interesting. Each OEM has to create their own special version of WinMo, complete with the requisite drivers for their specific hardware, chosen bluetooth stack and profile implementations, etc, and bundle it into into a ROM image. Then they have to license it some more every time they want to update it. Then they have to find some way to distribute it. And then you have all the carrier 'enhancements' to throw into the mix.
The whole process is a complete pain in the arse, both technically and administratively. If MS have locked down their hardware spec though and only offer one version of the OS, this should stop being such a problem.
It depends if Ballmer can get his head around the notion of giving an OS away for nothing as a loss leader for some other revenue stream. What other revenue stream I have no idea. Apple take a cut of everything from the handset to the apps to the accessories (every 'made for iPhone/iPod' logo product kicks back a chunk of sales revenue to Cupertino, plus you have to buy their auth chip now) and supposedly gets kickback from some carriers, although I don;t know the details of that.
So it will be interesting to see what MS does in this regard. Obviously they're taking a cut of the App revenue, but will that be enough to subsidise new OS versions I wonder ?
For Microsoft's sake, let's just hope that Apple haven't patented NOT having copy&paste.
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