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 …
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!
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.
"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.
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 :)
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.
"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/
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 ?
MS have stated that *at the moment* they haven't included Cut & Paste as a *system wide* function. There is nothing stopping app developers including such a function within their own apps (I.e. Word processors etc), and nothing stopping MS realising what a MONUMENTAL failure this decision is.
That being said, I've been an MS phone user since my old SPV e200 7 years ago, and have enjoyed each device I've had. Until now I have not seen any reason to move away from WM. Now ... definitely an Android based phone for me next. Waiting until the 26th for T-Mobile to release the HTC Desire/Bravo. :)
No side-load, no multi-task and now no cut/paste? What gives? I thought WM7 were to be a smartphone, not just an Xbox extension with Zune tidbits.
Never thought I'd say this, but I think I'll stick with the clunky old dear, ye olde WinMob 6.5.
.. and probably/eventually switch to Android when a decent Outlook desktop sync thing shows up (not just contacts, but todo's, notes, calendar, mail as well - the whole boring PIM shebang).
It's amazing. I have a Compaq PocketPC which is about 8 years old. It multitasks and it has copy and paste. It's running the same Windows CE codebase that I presume Windows Mobile 7 is derived from but without the benefits of 8 years of improvements. So what the hell gives?
IMO Microsoft have seen Apple's in-roads into phone land and redefining the user interface and have decided the only way they can compete is not by revamping Windows CE / PocketPC but by slapping a Silverlight layer over it and pretending the existing UI doesn't exist at all. i.e. they're keeping Windows CE for the basic services but building everything else that lives on top. In the long term maybe that would work but it means they've junked a lot of useful functionality in the short.
I think the situation is worse for MS because they licence their OS to phone vendors and they're not competing with Apple but with Android. Android is an all singing, all dancing phone OS that does do multitasking and other good things and does them well. And its free. Unless Microsoft pull the rabbit out of the hat and integrate a deal breaker (e.g. a pocket XBox platform or something) they are seriously going to get screwed for the next year until they fix their code and their model.
Never used C&P on my iPhone, am I a muppet? (mind you I never used my twitter account and I found facebook a bore and that was in 2006!)
Can't actually recall ever having the need, and that's in 18 months or more of having the device, I remember them adding it to the system, in the dim and distant.
Hate to admit it but maybe M$ are more right than wrong.
/rant
"It's just a shame we'll have to carry a pencil and paper until then." No.. it's just a shame we'll not be using Microsoft's mobile products at all any more. Because the market has what I like to call alternatives. That also applies to the iShite, the piece-of-shite-berry or whatever.
Anyway I digress. I won't be one of those retards that loyally backs a corporate manufacturer to the point that I will put up with unnecessary limitations. I use an android phone at the moment and there is absolutely no issue with implementing touchscreen cut and paste at all. But if I find that it becomes too annoying to carry 40 batteries in order to get enough power to last a business day on standby, then I will drop kick my HTC Eris into the nearest toilet and get a Crackberry or Treo or whatever.
To me if you are so retarded and sycophantic that you think any of these wankers gives a shit about you, you deserve everything you get the next time they screw you over. Every corporate is the same. Apple are most definitely no better than Microsoft, who are most definitely no better or worse than Google. Or Palm. Or RIM. They're all cunts and so are the network providers these cunts use. Treat them the way they'll treat you. If they do ANYTHING you don't like, hand them back their device and tell them how shite their OS is for doing it. Make sure they understand that their arrogance has and will cost them customers. We give these pricks the privilege of being their customer. It's time all of us started remembering this and dropping them as soon as they show they don't agree.
\rant
Hey, I happen to use cut and paste, particularly inter-application, a lot on my WinMo 6 phone!
Congrats Ballmer, you've just driven your Mobile OS's (de)volution back to the 90s. What's next, removing Office mobile and multi-tasking?
I remember paying $$$ for the ability to multi-task (albeit flakily), cut and paste between apps, and for a mobile office suite when I had a Sony Clie UX50 which ran Palm OS 5.2. Am I expected to do the same when I switch from WinMo 6 to 7?
Penguin. Because Linux phones can do more than WinMo 7 could.
And in that time, not once did I see any developer use any Windows Mobile device for one second longer than strictly required to complete their work. We hates them, precious, we hates them forever.
Microsoft have no idea about mobile handsets, never did, and never will. They used to think they were just mini desktops; now apparently they think they're making a DS. Except people actually like Nintendo.
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