Steve Wozniak, the man who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, was first in line waiting to buy an iPhone 4S at an Apple Store in Los Gatos on Friday.
The Los Gatos Apple Store opened at 8 a.m., but Wozniak queued up about 18 hours before the store's opening, as he mentioned on Twitter from his @stevewoz account on Thursday, writing:
The long wait begins. I'm first in line. The guy ahead was on the wrong side and he's pissed.
Joe Hewitt, the co-founder of the popular web browser Firefox, spotted "the Woz" outside the store shortly after he first lined up in Los Gatos and noted that he was riding a Segway scooter, another piece of technology Wozniak has expressed a passion for. Hewitt tweeted:
Woz and his Segway first in line at the Los Gatos Apple Store. Only one in line too!
Later, Hewitt wrote on Twitter:
Still only one other guy in line at the LG Apple Store with Woz, but the TV news trucks are swarming. I expect hysteria tomorrow.
Sure enough, a few news outlets showed up to the Los Gatos store to talk to Wozniak about lining up.NBC Bay Area stopped by to ask the Silicon Valley icon just what he was up to, given that Wozniak could likely get an iPhone 4S (or any other Apple product) from Apple directly without too much trouble. The website TechCrunch stopped by as well, appropriately filming a quick interview with him using the previous-generation iPhone 4.
Wozniak explained to both news outlets that he loves waiting in line for major Apple releases such as the iPhone 4S and this is in fact something he has done a few times before.
The Woz said he was planning to buy a white iPhone 4S on Verizion for his wife and that two new AT&T iPhone 4S handsets were being shipped to his home to replace his two AT&T iPhone 4 units.
In TechCrunch's video interview, Wozniak told reporter Jon Orlin that he believes the iPhone 4S is the first step toward a new future for mobile gadgets because of Siri, Apple's new voice-commanded assistant app which Wozniak called an "answer engine." Siri is making its debut on the iPhone 4S.
"Siri -- I have been using Siri, touting it and feeling that this is the way I want all mobile devices to be in the future, in the near future and the far future," Wozniak told Orlin. "You speak to it and it speaks back or it prints back answers, not just links to things that might get you what you need."
