Video: interview with Steve Wozniak!
We caught up with the one and only Steve Wozniak waiting in line to take an iPhone (or six) home. He even gave a bunch of people in line shirts and signed line badges. Aw, how nice! — [MP4] Download in wide VGA — [AVI] download in wide VGA
Context & Ripple Effects
A month after drawing a standing-room crowd for his Maker Faire talk on the magic of electronics — coverage that framed Wozniak as a low-profile figure doing school-district and charity work — he turned up on iPhone launch day not as an executive but as a customer waiting in line for six units. The syndicated pickups show the queue itself had become the story: Engadget ran a multi-city lineblog, Ars' Infinite Loop filed from San Francisco and Cincinnati, Scobleizer reported from the line, and even local TV covered a mayor fielding complaints about a campout.
First-order effects
- Wozniak handing out shirts and signed line badges turns an ordinary launch queue into press-friendly theater, giving Apple's debut day a co-founder endorsement without any corporate statement.
Second-order effects
- With the line now a covered event in its own right — liveblogs, TV segments, blog dispatches — other gadget makers face pressure to treat launch-day queuing as earned-media opportunity rather than a logistics problem.
Third-order effects
- The founder-as-superfan appearance signals a durable role for Wozniak as Apple's humanizing counterpoint to Jobs' stage-managed keynotes, and cements product launches as communal rituals that media will cover independently of the hardware review.
The trend: Consumer-tech launches are becoming participatory media events, with the queue — and its celebrity occupants — drawing as much coverage as the product itself.