The first iPhone shipped without copy and paste, or an official name for its software
When the iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007, its operating system had no formal name; Steve Jobs simply said the iPhone runs OS X. It also could not cut, copy or paste text. That arrived two years later, having until then been possible only on jailbroken phones.
Development was full of doubt. The team tried around 16 or 17 concepts, including an interface built on a multi-touch click-wheel, and many engineers questioned whether people would accept a keyboard drawn on glass rather than physical keys. What shipped was a grid-shaped home screen known as SpringBoard, 16 built-in apps including a YouTube player and Maps built on Google's data, a touch version of Safari, and gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and flicking to scroll. Later that first year, an update for the new iPod Touch let owners buy music straight from the iTunes store.
The big shift came with version 2 on July 11, 2008, alongside the iPhone 3G. It opened the App Store and released a software kit so outside developers could write native programs. Business users gained Microsoft Exchange email, VPN support and remote wiping of lost phones. A later update could erase everything after ten wrong passcodes.
Version 3, released on June 17, 2009 with the iPhone 3GS, finally added cut, copy and paste, along with Spotlight search, Voice Memos and a landscape keyboard in apps such as Mail and Notes.
The name iOS came with version 4, after the iPad launched, and with iOS 13 the iPad got its own branch, iPadOS. The same foundation also underpins Apple's watch and TV systems. Major releases arrived in June or July until 2010 and now usually come in September; iOS 27, released on September 14, 2026, is the twentieth major version.
Source: IOS version history
