The first iPhone was unveiled in 2007 and changed the world forever, but did you know that even Apple’s flagship product had to stick to some pretty strict design rules? With so many new features on the first iPhone, it might surprise you to learn that one very basic feature—the copy and paste function—was not among them. However, according to an article by Fast Company, this decision was due to Apple’s obsession with keeping things simple and elegant.
A brief history of copy and paste
Apple’s first smartphone wasn’t just a hit—it was such a paradigm shift that it made mobile phone software so much better. Like anything with high impact, though, there were some surprising hurdles to jump in getting from idea to consumer device. A former engineer at Apple, who worked on early iOS development and testing details one of those hurdles: The lack of copy-and-paste on iOS 1.0 (which shipped in 2007). The feature existed in beta version of iOS 2.0, but was nowhere to be found on version 1.0 or in earlier versions of Mac OS X. So why didn’t it exist?
Why Steve Jobs Didn't Include it
The first problem was a simple one—how to implement it. The iPhone didn’t have multi-touch, so you couldn’t do things like highlight or drag-and-drop text (like on Android phones). Instead, iPhones used tap select and a long press to activate different functions (long press = copy/paste). Tapping text would select it, but you couldn’t drag or highlight anything. In a lot of ways, being without copy/paste forced Apple to come up with better ways to do things rather than simply porting over functionality from previous versions of iOS. Unfortunately, that meant that some features were less intuitive than they could have been if they had copied Android features.
The consequences (and advantages) of not having it
In many ways, Apple’s decision to not include copy-and-paste support for its first smartphone was revolutionary. For one thing, it showed that Apple wasn’t afraid to make controversial decisions in pursuit of a better user experience. It also demonstrated how multi-touch input could vastly improve upon existing options. With touch input, you could use your fingers to select text instead of having to switch back and forth between keyboard and mouse or trackpad like you did on laptops. Perhaps more importantly, not including copy-and-paste meant that there was little reason for users to have their phone out while they were walking down crowded streets or using public transportation.