In a follow-up to the story we broke last week, Apple iPhone Apps has new information about an app that will, amongst other things, finally bring copy & paste functionality to the iPhone.
MagicPad is a rich-text editor that was recently submitted to Apple for verification and inclusion into the App Store. A rich text-editor, the first of its kind for the iPhone, MagicPad allows users to create text documents in which they can change fonts, text sizes, colors, and even add bold, italic, underline, and strike-through effects to their text. After creating their customized memos, users can also email the rich-text notes to themselves or friends.
And even bigger news? MagicPad supports copy, cut and paste — a very welcome addition for iPhone users. Apple’s decision not to include the basic editing feature has prompted nearly endless discussion, some going so far as to create an online petition, turning a seemingly trivial issue into a controversial one.
The company behind MagicPad is a newcomer to the development scene, Proximi, Inc.. Phil Larson, lead developer at Proximi, gave us some insight as to the company’s motivations behind the project: solve the thorny problem of implementing copy/paste system-wide on the iPhone.
While MagicPad only supports such functionality within its own application, the company sought to create a working case-study, both elegant and versatile, that would work across the entire iPhone platform. Due to limitations within the iPhone’s SDK, MagicPad’s rich-text abilities do not transfer between applications, but the company still comprehensively tested their solution for usability against other apps. Pulling out all the stops, the folks at MagicPad have even created a series of videos to demonstrate how how their version of copy & paste would operate with the iPhone’s preloaded native apps. The demos should soon be available to the public on the MagicPad site.
MagicPad is definitely a step in the right direction, and that right direction is getting copy & paste onto the iPhone. Proximi hopes the public will like their solution and they believe if many people download this application, it might give Apple the impetus it needs to finally make copying and pasting on the iPhone a reality. Again, the application is not available in the App Store yet, and we’ll keep you posted on when it goes live.
This is totally going to replace my “Notes” on the first screen of my iPhone. Why couldn’t Apple do this again?
Looks good to me.
Awesome, I’m going to sign that petition too.
How Much? When? Sign me up! WOW!!
Copy and paste within one app is cool, but not a killer feature. What would be really nice is the ability to copy/paste across apps. Apple’s policies on never having apps running in the background on the iphone basically means that unless they themselves do it, then we won’t see it. A shame.
Bah – this isn’t worth diddly squat since you can only copy/paste within _this one program_. You cannot copy/paste from, say, Mail to Contacts.
In other words: WORTHLESS.
Please tone down the bold type when writing about this app, since it is.. yes.. worthless.
I think they could have implemented it better.
The “select once/select again” is – imho – rather cumbersome and not suited for a multitouch device.
Why can’t we select the first point and “tap while holding”, and then move to the end of the section and “hold+double tap” or something like that?
Does this app sync notes properly (unlike the iPhones current Notes app)?
I would have to agree with Carlos. They should at least make it easier to copy/paste the text by allowing us to just tap the text we want to select and move our finger across the screen to select it! This is the universal way on all the computers, and it should be implemented on the iPhone too. I’m sure Phil can add this feature in his next version of this app.
Capen Karr, do you know when MagicPad will release this app and what the pricing for it will be?
Great concept – those who are complaining that it’s “only in this one app” are missing out on the big picture: Of COURSE it’s limited to one application right now, since Apple does not allow any “system-level modifications” which would possibly enable this in other areas. But, if the application is successful, and enough people request similar features across the entire iPhone OS…
However, this demo video is essentially horrible. No offense meant, Capen, but if you’re going to do a demo of a given app/feature, please take the time to ensure the video makes sense, isn’t confusing or misleading, and works as expected. A few of the problems:
– Confusing first demo of selecting text: Click to place cursor (we’re all used to this), but then another click, then another (double?) click and drag to select. Which action performed what?
– Immediately after copying text, you move on to selecting different text and showing off formatting features. Wouldn’t it be better to keep the “select and format” demo separate from the “select and copy, then paste” demo?
– Creating the separate to-do list: It was rather painful to watch the LONG inability to find the apostrophe (and then why did you not enter a space after the word?)
– Since we are replacing the name “Bill” with “Jim”, wouldn’t it have been easier to just select, hit “delete”, and type in the new name?
– The multiple attempts to select the second line were confusing – if you weren’t able to successfully perform this action, it doesn’t bode well for users being able to.
– Why is there a CAPTCHA? Is this a feature of the app? If so, why?
It seems that all of these could have easily been addressed in post-production – via a modified set of demonstration video snippets, or at least a clarification in the voiceover.
Any idea when this program will be released?
Yeah when will Apple accept this app? I could really use it. And do we have a sales price?
yeah well its useless unless it work with safari, sms and email. I mean what the hell am I going to do with a friggin text editor????
Release it now now now
@macho: it’s already been released and is available in the App Store!
Has this cut & paste been released yet?
iPhone 3.0 will have copy and paste!
@John Allegro, they said there were security issues…
That’s all great but how do I copy and paste a phone number from my contacts to sms to a friend?