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Why do phones need the clipboard at all? There is a 'share with' infrastructure. Why not explicitly send copied data to the desired app directly instead of stor

Why do phones need the clipboard at all? There is a 'share with' infrastructure. Why not explicitly send copied data to the desired app directly instead of storing it in a central place?

seanalexander 6y ago
Copy and paste.
catalogia 6y ago
I used to see lots of people question the merits of copy/paste when iOS didn't have it, because iOS didn't have it. When iOS finally got it, I thought the matter settled. The people who previously dismissed the feature now considered it the best Apple innovation since sliced bread (or perhaps the multi-buttoned computer mouse.) Do you never copy/paste text within the same document? How do you rearrange sentences, paragraphs, etc? Highlight-and-drag is cumbersome in long documents and is really an implementation of cut/paste, not copy/paste.
gruez 6y ago
That works for sharing an article or a post, but how do you quote a portion of a post?
- parliament32 6y ago
  On Android, you can happily select some text then hit Share (same menu as Copy and Cut).
  - gruez 6y ago
    That pattern is mainly used to open an app to a specific activity. eg. opening google search to a particular search phrase, or opening the dialer to a particular phone number. I can't see it working for when you're writing a email, and want to include a link/quote/image.
    - parliament32 6y ago
      But that's exactly what I just did. Highlighted some text in a news article and Share'd to my email client, it dropped the text in, quoted, to the body of an email with the link to the article under it.
stronglikedan 6y ago
I would really, really miss the clipboard on my phone were it not there. I use it daily. Also, I couldn't imagine having to use the 'share' functionality just to copy/paste. It's already such a frustrating experience just finding the app I want to share with, that I usually just end up selecting the 'copy link' option, opening the target app, and pasting it.

Why do phones need the clipboard at all? There is a 'share with' infrastructure. Why not explicitly send copied data to the desired app directly instead of storing it in a central place?

seanalexander 6y ago

Copy and paste.

catalogia 6y ago

I used to see lots of people question the merits of copy/paste when iOS didn't have it, because iOS didn't have it. When iOS finally got it, I thought the matter settled. The people who previously dismissed the feature now considered it the best Apple innovation since sliced bread (or perhaps the multi-buttoned computer mouse.) Do you never copy/paste text within the same document? How do you rearrange sentences, paragraphs, etc? Highlight-and-drag is cumbersome in long documents and is really an implementation of cut/paste, not copy/paste.

gruez 6y ago

That works for sharing an article or a post, but how do you quote a portion of a post?

parliament32 6y ago
On Android, you can happily select some text then hit Share (same menu as Copy and Cut).
- gruez 6y ago
  That pattern is mainly used to open an app to a specific activity. eg. opening google search to a particular search phrase, or opening the dialer to a particular phone number. I can't see it working for when you're writing a email, and want to include a link/quote/image.
  - parliament32 6y ago
    But that's exactly what I just did. Highlighted some text in a news article and Share'd to my email client, it dropped the text in, quoted, to the body of an email with the link to the article under it.

stronglikedan 6y ago

I would really, really miss the clipboard on my phone were it not there. I use it daily. Also, I couldn't imagine having to use the 'share' functionality just to copy/paste. It's already such a frustrating experience just finding the app I want to share with, that I usually just end up selecting the 'copy link' option, opening the target app, and pasting it.