Apple loves introducing new features. The legend is that if a feature arrives late, Apple will give you the best implementation of it. Unfortunately, legends are just that. Sometimes it is just late. Was this the case with taking two years to add basic cut-and-paste editing functionality to the iPhone?

This is Day 5 of 30 Days of iPhone, a look at the moments that shaped the smartphone era .

The iPhone Was Late To The Editing Party

Released alongside the iPhone 3GS on June 17, 2009. iPhone OS 3 introduced several features , including Spotlight, which would allow consumers to search through everything on their iPhone from a single dialog box. It also added a basic editing feature that had been missing since the first iPhone was released in 2007: the cutting and pasting of text, an omission that the media and its competing manufactuers would openly mock.

Discussing the addition of the editing essential, Apple’s Scott Forstall noted “it’s tough to navigate security issues and nail a simple UI,” a challenge that had been answered previously by countless mobile operating systems and platforms, including Android, Symbian, PalmOS, and Windows Mobile.

Curiously, Microsoft’s 2007 successor to Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, was also lacking cut and paste , and it took four years for it to return to that mobile platform.

Apple’s Continuing Quest For iPhone Security

Apple not only promotes the iPhone’s security to the public but also prioritises a secure platform over almost all other features. The ongoing legal cases and regulatory challenges Apple faces come down to maintaining that line as much as possible, and when regulatory changes are demanded, the solution proposed is one that Apple believes keeps its users as secure as possible.

Cutting and pasting between apps opens up potential routes for information to move between apps. With data siloed in each app during the first few years of the iPhone, Forstall’s promotion of security over text selection was the first of many decisions Apple would make on behalf of its users to keep their iPhones secure.

This is Day 6 of 30 Days of iPhone. Yesterday we looked at why Apple was forced to offer a discount on the first iPhone after two months .