Copy and paste on the Newton

While everyone waits for Apple to implement copy and paste on the iPhone (or hacks their own), Newton users have been enjoying it for 15 years.

Here's a great video of the just how Apple pulled it off on a previous touch device. Clicking and dragging selects the text, and moving it to the side of the screen sends it to the clipboard, represented by a shortcut. You can then move multiple copies out of the clipboard and into your applications with a drag of that shortcut.

It seems like a variation of this could work for the iPhone — drag text to an edge or corner as a clipboard. Of course, there's a lot less text manipulation on the iPhone than the Newton, which was a PDA.

Either way, I still love my Newton. Sure, people make fun of me for carrying around a PDA the size of a baby dolphin, but I don't care. At least I have copy and paste.