Cursors on Touchscreens, Done Right!

Since the mass shift to touchscreen interfaces, buttons are suddenly a little less useful - yes, more "unpressable" - since every onscreen button takes up display real estate that would rather be used for content.  So user interface designers have come up with tricks: swipes, press-and-holds, double-taps, and multifinger gestures to add functions without taking up more space.  iOS has been a leader in this area, but they aren't perfect - and moving the cursor is one of their weak points.  Since text is smaller than fingertips, moving the cursor requires that kinda-cloogy magnification area, and even then it's a whole separate interaction to move from the keyboard up to the actual text - not a smooth flow at all.  UX Designer Daniel Hooper came up with a better way - and shows it off in a quick, clever YouTube video.  Like touchscreen techniques used elsewhere, he treats the keyboard as an area that reacts differently to gestures than it does to taps: drag to move the cursor, use two fingers to increase cursor speed, hold Shift to select.  It's smooth, elegant, and immediately intuitive once you've seen it.  Interestingly, as Engadget mentions, he's appealing directly to Apple to make this change, rather than putting it out as software for jailbroken iDevices.  That sounds like a job application to me - and pretty darn good one!  Good luck, Daniel...