With all the recent excitement over touchscreens, it's sometimes easy to overlook that the mouse remains essentially unchanged from Ye Olden Days of the Regan era. Sure, they've gotten more ergonomically inclined, with new inputs like scroll wheels and third buttons; but a time-traveler from the 1980s would have no trouble recognizing and using one.

The mouse's current evolution, it seems, centers on making it more touch-centric than ever. Look at Apple's Magic Mouse, with a multi-touch surface that allows for scrolls, swipes, and zooms. Then there's Microsoft's Arc Touch Mouse, images of which recently appeared on a German shopping Website. Microsoft's not making anything official, but if the rumors prove true, the mouse includes some features that would give Sonny Crockett a severe case of future shock: touch-scrolling, a 2.4GHz nano transceiver, and the ability to flatten its regular arched shape for easier transport.

The mouse's page on that German website's already been taken down, but Engadget managed to snatch some screenshots ahead of the deletion. Slashgear's also posted a supposed marketing image, which has the Arc Touch Mouse looking like a black plastic inchworm.

Rumors peg the mouse's price at $69.95, and its release date sometime during the Fall (soon, in any case). Personally, aside from the coolness factor, I don't see the point of a mouse that can alternatively curve or flatten--I know some people would rather use a mouse with their laptops, and carry one along on trips; but I didn't figure enough of them out there to justify that sort of engineering decision. In any case, it's a differentiator.

Given how that silver strip bifurcates the top of the mouse into two black "tabs," I'm guessing this is a two-button mouse in the tradition of previous Microsoft offerings. Does a finger-swipe on that strip active the touch-scrolling? I'm thinking maybe; it's certainly positioned in the same place as a traditional scroll wheel. I'm curious about whether this follows in the steps of the Magic Mouse, with a multitouch surface, or if we're dealing with old-fashioned mechanical buttons.

Either way, Microsoft will likely make an announcement soon. For your viewing pleasure, here's one of the snatched box shots that's been drifting around the Interwebs: