The iPhone has come a long way since it was first introduced 15 years back. One of the most sought after flagship smartphones in the world, it has cemented Apple’s position as a technology behemoth, alongwith the company’s other products. But did you know that the first iPhone didn’t have a copy-and-paste feature? Former Apple software engineer and designer Ken Kocienda has something to share on why the Cupertino-based tech giant did not include that feature into the device, as per a report by 9To5Mac. Kocienda joined Apple in 2001, and was one of the key engineers working on the iPhone project.
According to him, the development team couldn’t get the feature ready by the time the first iPhone launched. They were actually busy working on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard and its autocorrect system. After the first iPhone was launched, Kocienda and his team decided to start their work on copy and paste options, but it still took some time before the feature was actually ready for users.
“The engineer explains that he came up with the “magnifying text loupe” idea to let users know where exactly they were pointing the text cursor, which was crucial to having copy and paste. However, even with that classic virtual magnifying glass, the cursor ended up moving between characters after the user lifted their finger off the screen due to natural flickering.”, adds the report.
A “touch history log” had to be developed which helped in keeping the cursor where the user really wanted it to be. How this worked was that when the users removed their finger from the screen, the system was able to detect the position of the finger “milliseconds after the last touch”, which made the cursor stay at that spot.
The copy and paste feature was finally introduced via the iPhone OS 3.0 in 2009, and came pre-installed by default on the iPhone 3GS.
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