April 26th, 2006 Daring Fireball:
A few weeks ago I noticed that most NSTextView-based apps now use a rather annoying “smart” C/C/P implementation.3 NSTextView is the standard built-in text-editing control in Cocoa, so this applies to most — but not all — Cocoa applications that allow you to edit text. The app I noticed it in is MarsEdit, but it’s also present in TextEdit, so feel free to use TextEdit if you want to play along at home.
I didn’t notice this feature until an annoyed HyperEdit user wrote to me about it. Luckily, as a cocoa developer the workaround is simple:
-[NSTextView setSmartInsertDeleteEnabled: NO]