Windows Phone 7 Lacks Copy-and-Paste 319
theodp writes "In a behind-the-scenes look at Windows Phone 7 (photos), CNET's Ina Fried notes that Microsoft's new software has won early praise for breaking ground in some areas, but takes a step backward in others. In particular, it doesn't support features like copy and paste and multitasking that were already part of the old Windows Mobile. 'I think users use cut-copy-paste periodically,' said Microsoft exec Terry Myerson, '(but) there's other things they use more frequently.' Hey, tradeoffs had to be made — it was either copy-and-paste or Goo Splat."
Re:Windows Phone 7 is great (Score:3, Informative)
Retaining a WinCE core doesn't mean that much, considering how much they've upgraded that kernel for WinPhone7. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing particularly good to say about either WinCE (as seen in WinMo phones) or WinPhone7, but I'm not going to go hunting for extra reasons to bash it either. A lot of the old restrictions that made WinCE suck are gone now, like the incredibly low per-process memory space, and it seems to do fairly well running devices like the ZuneHD (I don't have one, but I've played with a few and they appear to be quite solid devices with no obvious OS flaws; pity about the rendering engine, though).
Re:True, and they caught shit for it (Score:0, Informative)
After using the new iPad, I know why the 1st gen iPhones lacked copy and paste. It's freaking annoying. I can't figure out how to scroll down a web page without accidentally selecting a bunch of text for copy and paste, and then once it is accidentally selected how the hell do I un-select it? It's horrendous, and unlike the rest of the iPhone OS, it is completely unintuitive. Is there a way to turn the feature off?
Re:What is it then? (Score:5, Informative)
They are different platforms. Windows Phone 7 isn't done...the Kin phones are out. Yes, they plan to align the platforms in the future, and sure they use common components, but they are different platforms now, and the Kin phones are not Windows Phone 7.
Read up on it on Wikipedia, Google, or any number of sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin [wikipedia.org]
"The Kin is based on Windows CE and is distinct from Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 platforms."
Re:What is it then? (Score:5, Informative)
Very good - you found the source of the quote. Now read it. Follow the citation links. It doesn't say what you think it says. Here, I'll give you another snippet:
Microsoft said that the underlying fundamentals of Kin and Windows Phone 7 will be held together by similar core technologies. Both Kin and Windows Phone 7 run the same Silverlight platform. Microsoft has stated that over the long-term, Windows Phone 7 would be merged with Kin.
They are like enough for the similarities to be meaningful. Microsoft is going to be able to use the runaway success of the Kin as a springboard for their Windows Phone 7 launch. The result should be epic.
Re:True, and they caught shit for it (Score:4, Informative)
Either this is a really pathetic attempt at a troll, or you should just turn in your geek card. In order to enter the copy/paste mode, you have to double click a piece of text, or hold your finger in a spot (without moving it) for about a second. I find it very hard to believe you would enter this mode while scrolling unless your epileptic or unless you are scrolling web pages with your elbow. Try gentle swipes when moving a web page. This isn't a Storm phone. You don't need to hold down waiting for some response from the touch interface.
As to how to exit the mode, did you try clicking once anywhere on the page except for the 'COPY' popup button? You can also click once within the selected text, and it will turn it off as well. Once you enter the copy/paste mode, the only UI handles that matter are the edge selectors and the COPY button. Clicking once anywhere on the page that is not on one of those handles exits the mode. Anyone without about 5 seconds of experimenting could have figured this out. Yes Einstein, it's just that easy. I can see why you posted AC.
Re:Swing and a miss (Score:5, Informative)
Your post makes no sense. Both Symbian and Android are as open (or more open) than WinMo =6.5 is. And they both also have bigger market share.
Old news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Of course it's missing copy and paste (Score:4, Informative)
I use copy and paste all the time on my Samsung Omnia running Windows Mobile 6.1
Re:Windows Phone 7 is great (Score:5, Informative)
The native API is closed. You have to rewrite in Java,
This is false. See here. [android.com]
which is why Ansroid is missing so many categories of software and why the overwhelming majority of Apple developers are Apple-only.
Also false. iPhone has more applications because it has been out longer and there are more people with iPhones who buy apps thus providing the incentive and momentum for more applications to get written. As Android continues to mature and grow, this may change.
Re:Windows Phone 7 is great (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It wasn't me (Score:2, Informative)
Fuck me, what convoluted lengths are you not willing to stretch to to fulfil your analogies.
Re:Windows Phone 7 is great (Score:5, Informative)
How about... simple file management tools?
Want to store files on the Android? Oh wait, you can't. The only way to access files is through a rooted command-line interface. Or you can install a shoddy-quality, centralized, file manager.
Er, what? Astro file manager is very high quality and you can store as many files on /sdcard as you have space to hold. Furthermore,
no you don't need to be root to access files on Android with a terminal
emulator.
Want to open a downloaded image in Gallery? Sorry, you can't!
Complete bs. I just did the following on my Droid: Browsed to images.google.com, did a random search for kittens, clicked on an image for full size, long pressed it and selected "download", navigated to the download folder with Astro file manager, selected the kitten.jpg and it opened in gallery.
I'm not even going to bother quoting anymore of your rant except for this:
but I do have a Nexus One.
Have you even turned it on yet?
Re:Brave but Pointless (Score:5, Informative)
You've been in Steve's reality distortion field too long. If I didn't know better I'd say this was fark. Are you really trying to say that Windows 2000,XP were clones of OS 8 and 9? Cause MacOS 8 and 9 were atrocious causing instabilities everywhere, they couldn't even handle running out of disk space. The iPad is already a clone of other tablets, specifically the Archos Internet tablet which has been on the market for over a year and ran Windows XP and now runs Windows 7.
You give Apple way too much credit, I'm not saying Microsoft deserves any but you portray a woefully inaccurate picture of the landscape. There is no one genuinely trading a Windows XP machine for an iPad. They target fundamentally different markets and have different strengths and weaknesses. The iPad has cost me many hours of lost time and has cost my users many lost hours of productivity as they encounter it's limitations. It's so heavy I can't imagine wanting to read an entire book on it. It's pretty well limited to consuming content which is precisely what it is marketed as. It makes no attempt at content creation which is why it doesn't even include a camera or SD card slot or USB.
When it comes to mobile phones the iPhone was again nothing of a first besides the multi-touch UI. Apple's strength has been in presentation and marketing which is precisely what Microsoft used to be good at. There's no arguing that the strategy leads to business success at the cost of consumer freedom. Those of us that learned our lesson have headed for Android because we are given back the full abilities of our increasingly useful mobile hardware. I also laugh at you considering the iPhone having a full desktop browser. While it is a good browser the lack of flash makes that statement laughable at best and completely disingenuous at worst. My Android phone in contrast has a more full desktop browser but lacks functionality like adblock that I enjoy in my actual desktop browsing. It also has flash and full java capability unlike the iPhone.
As for an open platform being a malware vector I again laugh at your distorted view of reality. As a Windows mobile user and administrator for the better part of the last decade I can assure you that malware on Windows Mobile is few and far between, so few that I've never encountered it although I've certainly read about duped users but Windows mobile since 5.0 has had centrally managed software and full multi-user controls, things the iPhone even with version 4 still lacks. The iPhone makes a half decent toy but even the camera on my Samsung Moment blows the iPhone out of the water and that was Samsung's first attempt at an Android phone. Android lacks the centrally managed functionality that Windows Mobile and Blackberry has so it still has some catching up to do but development is moving quickly as my phone came with Android 1.5 and now has 2.1 which was a significant jump. Exchange support is great now even supporting remote wipe with 2.1. Of course the locks also work unlike the iPhone as shown by the latest version of Ubuntu.
Re:Windows Phone 7 is great (Score:3, Informative)
Does the NDK provide code interop with the Java Android libraries?
Yes, it does. Ever heard of JNI?
Not that you need it. The way you code a typical game in NDK, you have the entry point and event loop (for input processing) in Java, which calls into the rest of the game that's written in C/C++. The latter doesn't have to call into Java APIs anymore - it has input events passed to it already, and it can draw directly via OpenGL ES.
Re:Windows Phone 7 is great (Score:3, Informative)
For example, side by side, the Android browser in Froyo as running on a Nexus One has been demonstrated to be faster than the iPhone 3GS and the iPad despite the fact that they are both based on Webkit.
The Nexus One has a 1 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM, whereas the 3GS has a 600 MHz (both ARM Cortex A8) and 256 MB of RAM. The fact that up until Froyo the browser didn't run faster should be quite embarrassing.