Gestures could solve the problem of highlighting text, copy/paste, (as noted) deletion, and other commonly used commands used on a normal computer that are currently absent from the iPhone/Touch UI.

Personally, I can think of a dozen different manners that could be used as gestures. Surely Apple engineers have some in the works.

Noooooooooooooo

Gestures, indeed. The problem here is, all the gestures we have so fare seem to be extremely intuitive. In other words, they are the ones we would use on physical objects (flick a page in a book, pinch/squeeze to re-size, etc). The biggest problem with cut/copy/paste gesture combo is to make them logical. It must be done in such a way that everyone can figure it out without having to learn it.

Let's see; selecting something (an image on a web page, or a block of text somewhere) should be relatively easy. Press, hold, then drag (if text) or just press/hold (if an image or an object). Now, how do you copy, and how do you cut? Perhaps like this: press/hold/drag (to select); without lifting the finger, touch screen elsewhere with another finger and lift together, (more-or-less) simultaneously. Or, select text or object (press/hold/drag/lift finger); then pinch to cut, or swipe to copy.

I'm sure Apple has a bunch of very creative guys scratching their heads over this intensively and we'll soon finally get that cut/copy/paste functionality everyone's been complaining about.

Better yet... press and hold, then drag to highlight... a pop-up bubble similar to when it assumes the word you are typing, but it says "copy".

just like the wonder of mb and older ibooks and powerbooks, it would be wonderful to have double finger tapping available for cut, paste and edit functions that would appear from a contextual menu