Sascha Segan (met him, nice guy) recently got a chance to speak with Apple’s Greg Joswiak (never met him, seems okay) about three “missing” iPhone features; cut and paste, GPS driving directions, and an iPhone office suite.
Apple appears to be sticking to the “cut and paste isn’t a priority” story, as Segan reports that “Apple has a priority list of features, and they got as far as they could down that list with this model, Joswiak said.” That’s been a sticking point for some people since the first gen iPhone, and it was widely believed that it would be remedied by now. Looks like we’ve got some more waiting to do.
Then there’s the GPS issue. Apparently it’s believed that the GPS antenna isn’t powerful enough to provide true turn-by-turn navigation while driving. Joswiak dispelled this myth and says that the GPS chip in the new iPhone is the similar to GPS chips in other phones that provide turn-by-turn driving directions. The reason there aren’t currently any apps that provide driving directions is because of some “complicated issues.” Driving apps will indeed be available, though.
As for iPhone-specific office suites, it’s been rumored that “unspecified technical issues” have been hampering development. According to Segan, “Joswiak said he didn’t know of any such hold-ups, but then added that there might be issues with applications each having their own file space. ‘There’s no cross-application file structure,’ he said.”