Apple finally brings Copy/Paste to iPhone with iPhone 3.0 OS!

It’s that time of year again when Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) previews their next major update to the iPhone OS. Apple managed to undermine Sprint (NYSE: S)’s Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre webcast last week by announcing the iPhone OS 3.0 on the same morning that Palm and Sprint had expected to have the hype-machine all to themselves.

Today, Apple took us on a nice little tour through iPhone OS 3.0’s planned feature-set. And, after some slow-and-steady application demonstrations, Apple got to the meat of the presentation with a bang. The iPhone will soon have official copy-and-paste support in the iPhone 3.0 OS!

iPhone users have been clamoring for the cut/paste functionality that just about every other smartphone on the planet (as well as jailbroken iPhones) has been enjoying for, well, a really long time. Apple’s announcement of copy/paste on the iPhone OS 3.0 is something of a milestone in the iPhone’s development. It seems Apple needed a couple years to finally mature the iPhone OS to the point where it doesn’t draw derision from hardcore smartphone users.

The iPhone OS 3.0 copy/paste feature is dead simple, but then again, we didn’t really expect any less from Apple. A simple double tap in a text area highlights a block of text and offers the user a choice of “Cut,” “Copy” or “Paste.” The highlighted text box provides drag-points to expand or reduce the highlighted text selection. Since Safari zooms in and out using the double-tap paradigm, copying text in the iPhone Safari browser requires a long-press (press-and-hold). Safari automatically determines what block of text you’re interested in (the same way it determines how to zoom in on a webpage) and highlights that block of text. The drag-points allow you to customize how much of the text you want to copy, paste or cut.

What happens when you make a mistake or want to repeat a text-paste? You shake the iPhone, of course. The iPhone’s integrated accelerometers detect the shaking motion and prompts the user to “Undo Paste,” “Redo” or “Cancel” the correction/addition of text. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear just how much you’ll have to shake the iPhone to trigger the “undo” prompt – we’d imagine an iPhone user trying to “redo” a text-paste a handful of times would look like an iPhone-shaking madman to passersby.

Look for the official iPhone copy/paste functionality to go live with the iPhone 3.0 OS in June!

Image credit: EngadgetMobile