Fingerworks.com who was once a stand-alone company, was purchased by Apple about 5 years ago. Their products were significant in that many of them were intuitive, gesture-based devices made for Apple products. One of the original Fingerworks.com founders was responsible for the Multi-touch input for OSX and also many of Apple’s multi-touch based patents. One of the original press releases from Fingerworks, details an interesting interface:
"The MacNTouch Gesture Keyboard is a complete user interface that serves as mouse, standard keyboard, and powerful multi-finger gesture interpreter. Mouse operations like point, click, drag, scroll, and zoom are combined seamlessly with touch-typing and multi-finger gesture everywhere on the MacNTouch’s surface."
All of these details are nice, but what is the real significance you ask? It appears that a week or so ago this information was pulled from the Fingerworks.com site in the preparation of a possible Apple Tablet announcement.
If the rumors hold true about an unexpected interface, then this could be what we have been waiting for. Only a few short weeks and hopefully we will all know what touchiness ensues.
[MacRumor]