What do you think of the iPhone copy & paste?

It’s already been disabled with the 2.1 update. Not sure if they have since found another work around, but it will be a constant battle to keep it working, every time Apple updates the software. Apple will add copy/paste to the iPhone eventually, I don’t personally see any value in trying to deal with this hack to get copy/paste temporarily, especially when it will never work in the iPhone native apps like Mail or Safari. I’ll just wait for it to be added officially.

Uhh.. it’s not a hack. It’s an App in the AppStore. Click on the link.

PIXEL Just ignore him and he’ll go away. That’s what I do with my problems. I haven’t used Magic Pad yet, but I’ll probably download it now.

By hack I mean that it does not use a supported API in the iPhone system to do what it does. Individual applications have to be written to specifically use the system. If an application was not written specifically to use their OpenClip system then you can’t copy/paste from it and since Apple is not going to modify their own programs to work with it, it will never work with Mail or Safari.

Right now it only works with eleven different applications according to the developer, which is not a very large selection of applications to use it with. (Magicpad is based on OpenClip, and you actually can’t copy/paste between any of those applications with the 2.1 update)

And the developer’s blog even says that the 2.1 update broke the software so that you can’t copy/paste between different applications, only the same application (Magicpad) which seems kind of pointless to me, personally.

To learn how it actually works and why I call it a hack you may want to read this.

So again, I will personally just wait for full system-wide copy/paste from Apple, on my iPhone at least. But, as a proof of concept it’s not bad at the moment. I just don’t see it as anything more than that right now and only a solution from Apple is actually going to work well.

StellarAirman How could an app that’s sold via the app store be a hack and be “broken” by the 2.1 update? Also I’m getting a little tired of people linking Daring Fireball as a source for any tech related news.

The method they used to share information between applications was considered a security issue and was fixed in the 2.1 update so that you can no longer copy/paste between applications with that application, it says so right on the guy’s blog and on the product description page. I don’t mean it’s a hack like jailbreaking the phone or something illegal, it just obviously wasn’t a supported method of sharing information because it was considered a security flaw and is now fixed.

Daring Fireball has a lot of good, balanced and in-depth information on mac-related news, don’t see why you would consider it any less valid than any other source. He usually investigates things and backs up his opinions with valid sources more than most other bloggers.

The reason they “broke” it was so they can release it on another generation of Iphone so all us suckers will go buy it leading to Apple taking over the universe.

The copy/paste thing is kinda a scapegoat, sure apple should release copy/paste, but I think they just don’t want to give in to everyone asking for it to be honest. That might sound dumb, but it’s applesque. They’ll make a joke of it too when they release it, I’m sure of it.