I've been fairly quiet since 2.2.1 as it was pretty stable. However,
I've signed up as an iPhone dev now - dreaming of millions of micro
transactions making me rich, or more likely millions of support
requests - and have been playing with OS 3 beta. It's rude to kick
someone when they're down, and it was a beta, but now we are on to
beta 2 - jailbroke within a day I note - I feel able to comment on the
first one.
Some major freeze ups and app drop outs aside, my main concern has
been dealing with cut and paste and a wish for more user control of
screen orientation. The latter first: I often use my iPhone in bed,
where portrait use is hindered by being on my side. It would be lovely
to have a screen lock that would force portrait mode. You may have
noticed in 2.2.1 (or maybe even earlier) that landscape is sticky if
you rotate the phone upsidedown; I.e. Home button uppermost. This is
really useful for forcing landscape but more uncomfortable to hold
single handedly, as well as harder to scroll fast. So, come on Apple
give us more control like I have on my Tablet PC. I can imagine press
hold home button to pull up a dialogue box.
Ok, gripes with text select and cut and paste. Firstly, beta 2 breaks
paste when you cut rather than copy text. Beta 1 when you cut then
repositioned cursor (magnifying glass then release) gave you paste
option. Now this only appears if you have copied, which would mean
having to reproduce then delete text If all you wanted to do was move
it! Secondly, the copy select handles in landscape mode has far too
fast a scroll. A down arrow appears that zooms you too quickly when
all you might have wanted was to select down a line. This needs
Nerfing, but the portrait mode which has more text lines visible seems
better. Finally, I'd love it if the context popup menu appeared after
holding for a time rather than always when you release, which would
allow you to slide onto your menu choice without lifting the finger up
to then select. Select also seems a redundant option: the word double
clicked or held over should be highlighted by default, allowing select
all, cut and copy to be up straight off.
Ok, now let's consider text entry in Safari. Imagine you are posting a
comment using a form page. Positioning the cursor to edit is virtually
impossible as the cut paste police think you MUST be wanting to select
the whole paragraph for copying: workaround is to click done the name
a best guess blind as to where to put the cursor then make your
corrections. This was a beta 1 problem, but given the above my guess
is that it will be for 2 as well
More beta grumbles to come soon, but in the meantime here's some
music...
--
Mike is away from the office, but still in touch thanks to his lovely
iPhone
