On Mar 6, 2005, at 14:21, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
I just want to use my computer like I did in OS 9 and 8 and System 7 and 6, where finding something in one application doesn't unexpectedly overwrite what I was finding in another completely unrelated program.
If you feel strongly about it, you could write an input manager that switched the NSPasteboard implementation with something that didn't broadcast the changes -- although it'd only work for Cocoa applications, which it sounds like you're not using many of ;)
The thing is, OS X is a multitasking operating system. It practically begs you to open a bunch of applications at once, and I always do. The things I'm doing in one app are not necessarily related to the things I'm doing in another app [...]
I think Steve perceives it as although the OS multitasks, humans rarely do, and so, the job of the OS is to gracefully/indirectly transfer your work between applications, that's why we have services, drag'n'drop, cut'n'paste, “live pastes” with NeXT (and now an attempt to resurrect this for OS X [1]), Keychain Access, the global find clipboard and so on.
Personally I love the global find clipboard. Often there is output in Terminal or Console that I need to find in my sources, or there are stuff in my sources that I need to find in the documentation etc. -- using cmd-E/cmd-G is a very nice accelerator in these situations :)