Steven Berlin Johnson notes that you can't copy and paste text from the Apple iPad's iBook application. You can highlight it...
but then all you can do is "bookmark" it:
you can’t actually copy the text, to paste it into your own private commonplace book, or email it to a friend, or blog about it. And of course there’s no way to link to it. What’s worse: the book in question is Penguin's edition of Darwin’s Descent of Man, which is in the public domain. Those are our words on that screen. We have a right to them. [hyperlink, emphasis added]
With the "NY Times Editor’s Choice iPad app" (yuck) you can't even select, Johnson notes--it's just a frozen screen of words.
You just have to laugh, hard, when people say Apple is "moving us forward" or "moving computing into the next generation."
[hat tip ED]