14 DAY TRIAL // The introduction of the iPhone completely changed the mobile world, and in many ways, it was a turning point for the entire industry.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean the first iPhone was a perfect-10 device on all fronts. It wasn’t, and in fact, it actually lacked several essential features.
For example, the original iPhone didn’t have copy/paste, and according to former Apple engineer Ken Kocienda, there’s a good reason why this happened.
Kocienda explained on Twitter that the iPhone launched without copy/paste because there was no time to develop this feature, pretty much because Apple wanted the device on the market as fast as possible. So not even the design team had enough time to start working on copy/paste, with the parent company eventually deciding to release it at a later time.
Original iPhone announced on January 9, 2007
“The original iPhone didn’t have cut/copy/paste. Infamous! The quickest explanation is that I didn’t have time to do it right. I had too much keyboard, autocorrection, and text system work to do. The design team didn’t have time either. So we passed on the feature for 1.0,” Kocienda said in a recent tweet.
“Eventually, I worked with the design team to implement cut/copy/paste. The magnifying text loupe was my idea. The goal was to have your finger right on the spot where the insertion point should go, while letting you see where that was.”
The former Apple engineer also discussed the way the touch input was developed on the iPhone.
“The curvature of your fingers makes you think you’re touching higher up the screen than you are. So, touches are warped to account for this. That’s why—to this day—it’s hard to target taps when you hold your phone upside down,” he said.