Tired of waiting for a cut, copy, and paste on the iPhone? MagicPad -- a Note App replacement that also features Rich Text editing (buh-bye Marker Felt!) -- sure was. Witness the above proof-of-concept video. Ladies and gentlemen, the holy grail of iPhone feature.
Curious as to how they implemented their solution, and what challenges they faced? So were we, so we asked them. Read on for their answer!
Head of Product Development for Proximi, Juviwhale, told TiPb:
"The greatest challenge we faced when while developing MagicPad was attempting to develop a User Interface solution for text selection, copying and pasting on the iPhone that was simple and elegant yet versatile enough to be applied system wide.What we have implemented in MagicPad is the first step towards a larger goal. We feel that MagicPad is a case study for the implemetation of standard UI for text selection and actions on the iPhone.We also hope that Apple will soon define and implement a user interface for the iPhone which will make the demand for our product evaporate.MagicPad is a starting point, a limited demonstration of what we are proposing as a candidate User Interface for text actions on the iPhone. We understand that whatever User Interface Apple implements will most likley define how users interact we touchscreen interfaces for generations.We will actually detail our full comprehesive UI with a step-by-step video tutorialls on how our text editing system could work accross the iphone on our website shortly."The referenced video, which is basically our thesis statement and thought process behind our proposed system and how it would integrate system-wide, should be on our site shortly. We are not marginalizing the complexity of the issue and understand why Apple has taken so long to implement something; copy & paste on the touchscreen is akin to the next generation of right-click. An elegant solution doesn't just happen overnight, and MagicPad is hopefully just a launching point.
Just like early Mac developers helped further push the platform and provide impetus for solutions Apple has not yet had considered, here's hoping Apps like MagicPad do to same for the iPhone.
Thanks to Proximi, Brian Radmin, and Juviwhale.
