As we all wait with bated breath for the latest announcement of awesome from Cupertino, I thought I’d mention something that I’d love to see Apple make: a “soft button” keypad for configurable hotkeys.

I spend most of my work day at the computer, either writing code or working in hotkey-heavy applications like Adobe Fireworks or OmniGraffle. I also tend to use hotkeys for closing windows, switching applications, creating new tabs in browsers and terminals, switching between windows, and (all the damn time) copy/paste. The result of all this hotkey action is that I get pain in my fingers, particularly my left index finger — the go-to digit for most of my hotkeying. Between that and the constant need to type almost as fast as I can, the pain can sometimes become nearly debilitating, causing me to have to stop using my computer for up to half a workday sometimes, which in turn costs me money.

As has been pointed out quite a bit, QWERTY sucks and is really just around because of design inertia. Keyboards don’t really seem designed to be used by human hands. As much as I love Apple’s recent innovation of the peripheral keyboard that feels like a laptop one, I still find myself with major hand fatigue at the end of the week.

If I could just set my hotkeys to be what and where I want them to be, I think I could solve a lot of this. I’m envisioning something that looks sort of like a square iPhone, sitting to the left of my keyboard and plugged in via USB. Spread across the screen of the device would be my hotkeys, customized in function and position, and changing automatically when the active application changes. Since the keys would be on a “soft” screen, I could position and size them how it made sense for my hands and my workflow. Since they could each have a custom function, I could reduce the claw-making, four-button combos I frequently have to pull off in my editor to just one tap of one button. This would make my hands happier. Happy hands, happy dev.

I know there are soft keyboards out there, but I’m not really looking for that. What I want would me more versatile — a “key palette” if you will. I could see this being only one of many possible uses for such a device.

Anyway… Apple, should you decide to make one, there’s no need to give me credit. Just send me a free one. My over-stretched left index finger will breathe a sigh of relief from inside its ice pack.