Everyone on the internet seemed to be liveblogging or reading liveblogs of Apple's iPad 3 launch event on Wednesday. Everyone, that is, except for Apple founder and number-one fanboy Steve "Woz" Wozniak. He was in Las Vegas, hanging out with the IBM data center geeks at its Pulse 2012 conference.
The keynote pitch, according to the conference's website? "Discover what the data center of the future will look like, in the year 2020 and beyond."
Although Woz is famous for waiting in line along with the Apple faithful when new Apple products go on sale, he doesn't actually work for the company. In his day job, he's chief scientist at Fusion-io -- a storage company that is trying to speed up things in the data center.
In a way, it makes sense that Woz would be talking Big Data at IBM. The lines between corporate IT and consumer technology are becoming increasingly fuzzy, and it seems appropriate that the founder of the biggest brand in consumer tech would now be spending his time talking to the dudes with the pocket protectors.
Woz was interviewed by IBM Fellow Grady Booch at pretty much the same time that Apple was unveiling its iPad 3. The Twitter reviews of the interview are good, but don't expect him to be in line line again when the iPad 3 goes on sale March 16.
Grady Booch tells Wired, "Woz said he wants one. As for standing in line on the 16th, he said he'd love to, but had a speaking engagement already on the books for that day."
This story was updated to include comment from Grady Booch
