
Apple: iPhone Copy and Paste Now Working Between Safari and Mail - raju
http://gizmodo.com/5107138/iphone-copy-and-paste-now-working-between-safari-and-mail
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ryanwaggoner
Title makes it sound like this is an official announcement from Apple, but
this is just another copy-paste hack, albeit a clever one.

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stcredzero
Seems like Steve Jobs is so strongly drawn to simplicity and control, it can
become a weakness. His strong desires for simplicity and control are also
sources of his success, but they can also drive him to make decisions that
infuriate customers (one button mouse, no iPhone cut & paste, no MacBook
Firewire).

Perhaps this will prove to be Apple's Achilles' Heel.

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unalone
Hardly. The two services you're mentioning aren't ones that huge droves of
people care about. MacBooks still sell without FireWire. iPhones still sell
without copy & paste.

It's only a weakness if somebody else DOES implement c&p _while retaining the
beauty and simplicity of the iPhone._ That's the only case in which Apple has
a chance of losing. If that scenario _does_ come up, though, then Apple can
take whatever that innovative solution is and use it for its own.

We've seen bulky computers with FireWire, and complex phones with copy and
paste. The fact that Apple's gaining ground despite not having those specific
things is a sign that Apple's vision is more important than those specifics.

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stcredzero
The two services I'm talking about? How about the one button mouse? That's the
primary example. Going against the grain _that_ far is a bit too much. As
people use phones in ever more sophisticated ways, the lack of cut & paste
will become an issue just as big as the one button mouse. (Of course, cut &
paste is not the right way to do it. What people really want to do is to move
certain pieces of information between applications. There must be a better,
more elegant way to do that.)

I would agree that the vision if valid. But remember, I'm talking about an
Achilles' Heel. Maybe it's a little (but exploitable) flaw in something that's
overall great.

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jshen
" As people use phones in ever more sophisticated ways, the lack of cut &
paste will become an issue just as big as the one button mouse."

Wow, this is a tired meme. How is the one button mouse a big issue? You buy a
new mouse. Hell, you don't even need to do that these days with imacs which
come with a mighty mouse.

The lack of two buttons is a giant non-issue just like white space in python.

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stcredzero
You've just proved my point. A lot of people want the two-button mouse. The
Mighty Mouse is effectively a two button mouse. The one-button mouse is so
undesirable people buy a different one.

It's not an issue in using a mac. I never said it was. However, it reveals a
cognitive blind-spot in Steve Jobs.

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jshen
Actually, you said that the one button mouse was a BIG issue. It isn't, and
that was my point.

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stcredzero
Okay, I did use the words "big issue." But I didn't mean that the way you took
it. I'm a mac user since the 128k mac days as a child. It's not an actual big
issue in most cases when using the OS and machine. It's _perceived_ as a big
issue by those used to something different. It's not a marketing plus -- it's
actually the opposite!

The fact that Jobs "stuck to his guns" for so long when it was apparent that
the one button mouse was a big loser is the salient point. My point isn't that
macs are crap because of the one-button mouse. It's clearly trivial in
practice. The fact that Jobs kept up with that for so long, even featuring it
as a key marketing point, in the face of overwhelming preferences the other
way is a big potential Achilles' heel. (As I said before, it's also his
strength. The trick would be to get him going against the grain in a way that
actually matters.)

