Apple acquires a multi-touch company 5 years ago and leaves its website up & running until last week. Sheer coincidence or another sign of the coming “tablet-pocalypse”?

MacRumors is reporting that Fingerworks.com has been pulled down, nearly 5 years after Apple acquired the company and left its website live but dormant. Fingerworks, you may recall, released some amazing multi-touch keyboards and gesture pads for the Mac prior to being snapped up by Cupertino. MacRumors believes the website’s disappearing act may be a clue that Fingerworks technology is included in the Apple tablet expected to be unmasked later this month.



An old press release from Fingerworks describes the benefits of their multi-touch system in a combination keyboard and touchpad:

“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.

“People are amazed by all the things a hand gesture user interface provides. We have a large number of easy-to-use gestures that cover just about every common computer operation. Users don't have to reach for hotkeys because gestures are faster and easier to do.”

If the sudden departure of Fingerworks.com isn’t enough evidence, the name of one of the company’s founders, Wayne Westerman, appears on numerous Apple multi-touch patents, including one for advanced gesturing implementations for Mac OS X.