MacMost Now 254: iPhone Copy and Paste and Other New Features

Take a look at how copy and paste work in the new iPhone OS 3.0. You can use it in Notes, Mail, Safari and just about any other application. You can even copy and paste pictures. Also look at landscape mode typing and the new search functionality.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Gary Rosenzweig: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today�s episode, let�s go and take a look at the new iPhone 3.0 operating system and let�s see some of the new features like copy and paste.
There�s actually a whole bunch of little improvements to the OS that are built into iPhone 3.0. Now these are besides the big features like being able to tether in countries that are outside the US, and being able to do MMS, being able to do parental controls; new features like that. These are things that import and modify what�s already there.
Okay. Right away you�ll notice one new feature of the iPhone OS 3.0 is you can use landscape mode in Note and also in Mail. So here we are in the standard Notes program but now in landscape mode. Now I�ve typed some text here. I�m going to double click or double tap on one word here and we�ll bring up the selection. This is a line on the left and the right with a dot on the top of the left and the bottom of the right. I can drag these dots as I please, just like more or less the text. And then I can click on one of the buttons that appear above it, Cut, Copy, and Paste. I can copy. And now I�ve copied text to the buffer. Notice that the selected area still remains there and I can do something like press delete or start typing and it will replace the text in there just like it would if you were doing this on a Mac. I can also go ahead and adjust the selected area again and those little buttons will appear again knowing that I�ve reselected a new area and perhaps I want to do something different with it. 
Okay so now that I have something in the buffer, I�m going to go ahead and put a return in, go to the next line, and I�m going to paste. The way I would do that is to double tap right where my curser is and now I can go ahead � and you see I�ve got �Select, Select All, Paste.� Select will start a new selection. Select All will select all the text and Paste will paste the text I have in the buffer in there. You can see it did it. Now of course I can also paste from here into another application � say Mail or Calendar or even the address bar in Safari, forms in Safari, that kind of thing. 
Now this also works in Safari except in Safari if you�re copying and pasting something for a page, you�re not actually editing it so the double tap doesn�t work for instance, if I double tap here, it zooms in, which is what Safari does. But now I can use the tap and hold to bring up a little magnifying glass and release it and now it brings up a selection box and I can start expanding to the right. I can also expand down and it will start doing it line by line, which is much quicker than having to do each character at a time. Get to the point that I want. See it�s even grabbing entire lines here for me very easily. Release and now I can click on copy. Now if I would go to mail, I can paste that into an email. I can even paste that into a note or calendar event as well. 
So a big do and deal about copy and paste, it�s not just for text. I can also go into photos. You can look at My Camera Roll of photos and look at all the photos I�ve taken on my iPhone and I can select one. I click down anywhere in the photo and I get a Copy. When I select that copy right there and now I can go into another app � say mail � I can go into the body of the text and I can go ahead and paste. I can simply hold down, release and I get Select, Select All, and Paste like before. Click on Paste and there it�s actually going to paste that photo right into my email. 
Now searching is very different than anything else in the iPhone because instead of it being an app, it�s actually a different screen. So here�s like a screen of apps. Here�s a screen of apps. There�s actually now one to the left and that�s the Spotlight Search screen. So now I can start typing something here and I�ll actually come up with a result. It�ll search through my contacts, it�ll search through bookmarks, it�ll search through notes even and will find things there and I can click on any one them and it�ll instantly take me to that item inside of that app.
So another cool thing that�s really hard for me to show is the Undo function in the iPhone 3.0 OS. The way it works of course, because there�s no Command Z to hit is you shake the iPhone. So you do something like, say for instance I just pasted that photo. I shake the iPhone like this and I come up with a little dialogue box that asks me if I want to undo the paste and it will even allow you to redo things. The second time I shake it, it will ask me if I want to redo the paste or undo the step before that. So it�s very handy and very Mac-like in how the undo works.
So here�s a quick look at Copy and Paste, Landscape mode, Undo, and also the new Spotlight Search. 
Til next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 254: iPhone Copy and Paste and Other New Features

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