The world has become an (almost) weightless place

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Nike-Free-50-MensI just got my new pair of Nike Free run shoes which come in at around 9 Oz. (255g). The pleasure of wearing them comes, apart from their awesome comfort, from the minimum weight. It is really a big difference to wear these weightless shoes compared to others.

This actually got me thinking of how much our surrounding and our hardware has changed in the recent years.

Take as an example the introduction of Apple’s iPad. While many people at the introduction made fun of the name and many tech-bloggers said that they are not sure if people will take to it, it has by no doubt become Apple’s biggest success. People were actually ready to leave their laptops (dragtops) at home and travel with an iPad only. Despite that one can’t do the same with an iPad as with a laptop, let alone typing fast, people were ready to take the compromise because it was light, easy to put into any bag/purse and immediately available to work with.

It is simply natural for Apple to take the successful iPad form factor and make it into a smaller version. Again people took more to the smaller version of the iPad, because it provided the same functionality, same resolution, same applications but was lighter and fit even more into our “always on and always available” society of today.

The weightless “need” carried over to the laptops (finally). I remember my past laptops and what a drag it was to carry them around. You had to use a big laptop bag to put the big laptop in. Additionally, the charger made it weight some more. Needless to say, taking and working everywhere was not a “weightless” task.

Today, I’m working with a MacBook Air 13″ which comes in at 2.96lbs (1.35Kg) and does work flawlessly and has more power then many laptops before. Again, I can see that my own setup has gone “weightless” too. I went from a 17″ laptop to a 15″ one and since one year work with the AIR 13″. I do all my work on the AIR and Razuna and other open source applications are all done with it too. The “hordes” of people raving about their weightless laptops (AIR and others) simply shows that people want and expect hardware makers to give them powerful laptops in a small form factor.

I’m excited to see how the future unfolds in regards to the new wearable hardware that is slowly being introduced. Personally, I won’t see myself wearing Google Glasses or a “smartwatch”. It just doesn’t cut it for me. I just don’t get why I should wear yet another piece of hardware around given that I got a laptop, a mobile phone, kindle or tablet and Nike Fuelband on me most of the time.

However, I would love to see companies introduce more integration or even an extension to my mobile phone (I have pointed out in the past that Ubuntu is on the right track here with their ability to have the Ubuntu OS launching as a desktop (YouTube Video)).

Giving me an option to simply carry around a phone that would be at the same time my working machine would be truly an “innovation”. Then finally my personal vision of “weightless” will become a reality.

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