Discussion
The iPhone Shipped Without Copy and Paste. Jailbreakers Had It First...
The first iPhone shipped on June 29, 2007 with no copy and paste, and the people who modified their phones got it months before Apple did. Engadget reported in January 2009 that jailbroken iPhones running the Cydia package manager had a new add-on for it. Wikipedia says the feature was not supported at release and that iPhone OS 3 came out on June 17, 2009.
People wanted it badly.
Apple's own March 2008 announcement said that with the iPhone SDK, third-party developers would be able to build native applications for the iPhone, which was the other big gap.
A first-generation product usually skips something basic, and the community fills the hole before the company does.
If you are about to buy a new phone, headset or watch, list the boring things you do fifty times a day and test those in the store. Copy a paragraph, switch apps, share a photo. Skip the demo reel.
The headline features get the keynote. The boring ones decide whether you like the thing a year later.
Computerworld wrote that the single most desired feature is copy and paste. Macworld called it perhaps the most anticipated change in the 3.0 update. When Apple finally announced it, NBC News quoted an analyst saying it was "a feature that should have been there in the first place."
None of that stopped sales. Apple said it sold its one millionth iPhone just 74 days after its introduction on June 29.