This is what Microsoft is good at, they announce something very early, then take forever to develop it, and usually make somewhat of a success out of it. My guess is so many people are unhappy with Vista that they need to give the impression that they're working on something nice for the next Windows version so users stick with Windows and not jump ship to Mac or Linux.
Concerning multi-touch interface, I think it can be a very good thing for some situations, some computers. A regular, typically low-cost, office computer won't benefit much from multi-touch, but a portable tablet-type computer would, for example.
The concepts seem "ripped" yes, but I think we need to wait until it's released to see what they're exactly doing. Let's remember that the original Mac OS was more or less "ripped" (at least as a concept) from XEROX.