Most people don't even know that they have a problem because they are unaware of what they should be able to do. They think that any preventable annoying behavior is the natural state of the machine. I was spending time with my parents awhile back and happened to look over to watch my mom try to communicate some content from a website she was looking at to a friend. She would go back and forth from the browser, to the message, to the browser, to the message, reading and typing. I asked her "Does that site block copy paste? Why aren't you copy pasting?" She gave me a blank look. I showed her that copy paste was a feature and it blew her mind.
She didn't think that she had a problem because she didn't expect copy paste to even be a function on a phone (as she is not a confident computer user either).
Easy to complain about copy/paste functionality, but how else would you implement it?
I agree with most of the criticisms in the article, but copy/paste is just one of those things that is never going to be 100% reflexive or intuitive on a touchscreen.
I'm not complaining about the implementation. The problem isn't just how features are implemented, it's that many users lack the mental models to successfully use these devices at even a basic level.
Sure someone can Google "how do I copy paste on an iPhone", or maybe Apple could somehow make the feature more intuitive (they probably can't as you say), but fundamentally the user is required to understand that:
* The iPhone is a computer underneath
* Computers have standard sets of features for text manipulation, one of which is copy paste.
* Being a computer, the iPhone should likely also have this functionality implemented in some way.
If you don't understand these three things then why would you assume that there would be ANY implementation of copy paste? My Mom didn't understand that copy paste as a concept was a thing
This is why the educational programs that the grandparent poster was talking about are important and it's a shame that they're gone.
I know how to copy/paste on an iPhone and it's still an insufferable operation. I don't know if my fingers are fatter than the average but I find it next to impossible to select anything, or even place the cursor at the end of a word instead of selecting an entire word for that matter.
Same here. I just learned yesterday that iOS 12 allows you to rest your finger on the space bar to begin moving the cursor like you would a mouse. Use another finger to tap the keyboard (anywhere) to start and end selection mode.
It's a lot easier than trying to precisely aim your fat meat fingers on the itty bitty text!
She didn't think that she had a problem because she didn't expect copy paste to even be a function on a phone (as she is not a confident computer user either).