That's a fair question to ask. The cheeky answer is that it's not my problem to solve, it's theirs. But I am a product manager, so I'll take a shot. None of these replace what we have. Some of them conflict.
1. Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it, and make it immediately position the cursor.
2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor. Spread them and the selection widens.
3. Allow double-tap to select a word.
4. Double-tap and drag to select word by word.
5. Pinch on a selection to cut.
6. Deep press on a selection and drag-swipe in different directions to copy, cut, and formatting options.
7. Deep press on an unselected spot and drag-swipe in different directions to paste and other options.
> Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it.
Apple does this with many gestures already. Double tap to select a word for example. I think bringing back deep press would be a great move, and agree with everything else you've said here on that.
> 2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor.
Long press will put the cursor where your finger is, and will give you a magnified bubble for finer selection (did you really mean to select before or after the hyphen?)
> Spread them and the selection widen ... Pinch on a selection to...
these pinch style gestures would be unusable on a 5" screen I think, and incredibly fiddly even on a 10.1" iPad screen. I work in games, and even though our controllers can handle multiple inputs, we generally tend to avoid chorded inputs because the average person's dexterity is not as good as you would think.
Yeah, the pinch stuff probably wouldn't work well on a phone. I don't know for certain that the problem is even solvable. But it could be made better, and it's clear Apple either doesn't care to try, or thinks that the tools are so frozen in peoples' minds that innovation wouldn't be accepted.
1. Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it, and make it immediately position the cursor. 2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor. Spread them and the selection widens. 3. Allow double-tap to select a word. 4. Double-tap and drag to select word by word. 5. Pinch on a selection to cut. 6. Deep press on a selection and drag-swipe in different directions to copy, cut, and formatting options. 7. Deep press on an unselected spot and drag-swipe in different directions to paste and other options.