I find I only use SELECTION if I'm going to paste whatever I copied immediately, but in those situations I do think it's a bit faster. If need to do anything else between copying and pasting I'll use CLIPBOARD instead.
I think this is the key insight. The old way makes selection a first class citizen of the windowing environment. If you view it not as copying, but taking advantage of the last selection, it makes a whole lot more sense.
This is not to say that explicit actions on the clipboard aren't useful. But, as an emacs user, I'm used to way more control over the kill ring than I typically see exercised on the clipboard.
This is not to say that explicit actions on the clipboard aren't useful. But, as an emacs user, I'm used to way more control over the kill ring than I typically see exercised on the clipboard.