Existing users, 
How an iPhone copy/paste function might work
Posted 8 August 2007 @ 4pm in News
An iPhone Atlas reader has put together a remarkably well-done video rendition of how a copy/paste function might work on the iPhone. Produced in Shake, the demo video suggests that to copy text, the user would bring up the magnifying loupe then tap on another part of the screen to enter copy mode. You could then tap where you want the selection to end, and do another loupe-tap combo.
Pasting would require selecting a blank spot and loupe-tapping again, which would bring up a clipboard selection palette (we’re not sure how the designer plans to make a distinction between copying and pasting). The proposed mechanism leaves something to be desired from a usability standpoint, but is worth watching nonetheless.
The reader who created the video told us:
“I had an idea about how to tackle the missing Copy and Paste functionality on the iPhone, and rather than just describing the solution, i decided to mock it up in shake (the compositing package I use for the visual effects work i do). and i set it to music and cut it in the style of the iPhone demo videos Apple has up on their site.”
Ironically, if you’re on an iPhone right now, you won’t be able to watch the below video becuase it’s encoded with Flash.
iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich and Vimeo.
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2 Comments
Posted by jtenenb
8 August 2007 @ 10pm
wow. not only was this video very very amusing and well done, but this guy has a solution for a problem that really did not seem to have a clear solution. Someone needs to get this guy over to 1 Infinite Loop and show them this thing.
Posted by gene_technics
15 August 2007 @ 12am
I guess it works like “selection - the Copy dialog - placing a cursor - the Paste dialog - pasting is performed with pushing the selection into a stack to be ready for the next copy operation”. But how to organize a multiple copy/Paste All operation.
I think it’s better to use just one Clipboard dialog with an additional icon on the toolbar: selection as in the video - select a Clipboard icon for copying - multiple selection/copy operations - placing a cursor - Clipboard icon for pasting of a single entry or all the entries.
BTW, I don’t have an iPhone yet (it’s planned by Apple to sell it in Asia for the next year) but I’m working on my own version - the Cell PC Platform (http://geocities.com/gene_technics/) - more compact one like a MotoRAZR2 with two displays.
Michael