MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

Wired on Cut and Paste in the iPhone 2.2:

It’s possible that Apple is taking so long to implement copy and paste not because it is difficult, but because Apple is reinventing it. Imagine a system-wide menu added to all applications which, instead of shuffling items off to a clipboard, lists all the places you can send that file (or text string). This would be like the existing “Open with” option available in the Mac’s right-click menu — each application effectively reports to the OS exactly what kind of files it can handle and the OS remembers this. Thus a picture could be sent to not only the Photo app, but to any other photo program. Text could be sent directly to any open dialog box in, say, Safari.

This is a bad idea because it would make it difficult to copy and paste multiple items into the same document or other text based app. For instance, when I began this post, I first opened MarsEdit with the link to the above article. How would I be able to go back into Safari and get my quote and paste it into the same document? To do so, I would have to save the ME post and have it offered to me in the cut and paste contextual menu. Fine – but if the saved post is offered to me, then every draft post as well as every other saved document will be too, resulting in an impossibly long menu. There would have to be a ’search documents’ function within the cut and paste contextual menu. Quite complicated!