Windows Phone 7 can’t copy and paste

Microsoft may be targeting the iPhone with its consumer-orientated, finger-friendly Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system, but we’re not sure that mimicking everything that Apple once deemed important is the best way to go about it.

Yesterday we wrote about how Windows Phone 7 won’t feature memory card support, the side-loading of applications and multi-tasking for anything but Microsoft’s own apps. So, just like the iPhone, WP7 devices are stuck with onboard storage, nothing but officially sanctioned software and apps that must be quit when you want to do something else (although Microsoft does have a push notification system for non-running apps system in place — much like the iPhone’s).

Although annoying, given the features that can be found in all versions of Windows Mobile, none of these retrograde steps is really a deal breaker if WP7 really is a ground-up rewrite that severs all ties with its ugly, clumsy forebears.

Today, however, comes the news that WP7 won’t support a copy and paste functions and, frankly, this is one missed feature too far.

This surprising snippet comes from a Q&A session at MIX10 where a Microsoft representative apparently stated that there just wasn’t time to include clipboard operations for the planned end-of-year launch of WP7. This, in short, is nuts.

Some apologists may point out that the iPhone didn’t have cut-and-paste when it launched and it didn’t do too badly. The point, however, is that the iPhone now has copy and paste — and has had it since June 2009. Does Microsoft really want to invite feature comparisons with a smartphone operating system that’ll be over a year old by the time it launches? And that’s assuming that iPhone OS 4.0 hasn’t appeared by then, of course.

Exerting a tighter grip on hardware manufacturers and software developers is no bad thing if it means that WP7 will be more solid and consistent (and, yes, more iPhone-like) than Microsoft’s previous mobile efforts, but we’d much rather see a smartphone that had the ability to copy and paste text from a web page than one that could look up an Xbox Live profile.

We doubt WP7’s feature list is set in stone at this point and with a few months still to go before it launches, Microsoft really needs to rethink what it considers to be the most important features for a smartphone operating system in 2010.

[via CNET]