To finagle a spot in line on the day of the new iPhone 3G S's release would be impressive enough; to do so in the heart of Silicon Valley, where new gadgets are especially coveted, implies Wozniak has grown his skills of persuasion to Jobsian heights. From a shopper in the MacRumors forums:

I arrived at 3:50am and Mr. Woz was chopping it up with the manager at Apple. Then around 4:30am he politely asked everyone in line if he could be the 1st to get his iPhone at the store and everyone said yes.

Of course, while Wozniak was talking people out of the precious spots in line, Jobs was collecting their money. The Apple CEO always manages to come out on top.

[via Business Insider]

Wozniak told the Journal's Ben Charny that Jobs, who went on leave in January, "doesn't sound like he's sick." His comments came during a side conversation at the newspaper's D tech conference in Carlsbad, California.

But Woz added he hadn't actually asked his old friend about his health directly. So perhaps it's no surprise that traders didn't take the ballroom-dancing computer engineer's medical evaluation too seriously; in the two hours after Woz's quote was published, Apple shares traded basically sideways.

The Woz and partner Karina Smirnoff were ejected from the televised dancing competition last night, four shows into a season that was already something of a Silicon Valley obsession before the first installment even aired. The charmingly oversharey ubergeek won plaudits from the judges for his enthusiasm and, following a foot fracture, determination.

But as computer-hardware-designer Woz himself knows, brute force is rarely the optimal way to solve a problem; elegance inevitably wins over the long term. Tiring of Woz's clumsy steps — one said Woz's was the worst Samba he'd witnessed — the judges eliminated him last night, along with former Playboy model Holly Madison.

Ever the gracious contestant, Wozniak went of his way after being eliminated to praise the Dancing voting system he had once slammed; as well as Madison and partner Smirnoff. "I want to dance more with you," he told her.

We have a feeling there are at least a few other people who'd like to keep watching.

Woz's quip:

I was more shocked than any time in my life. Maybe except when I got served with divorce papers.

Turns out I'm not alone in thinking Woz makes a great reality TV star. It's not like we want to watch quality dancing; we just want entertainment. And we're getting it for at least one more week.

The latest on Woz, who performed last week with a fractured foot: He's going on air tonight having pulled a hamstring and accused DWTS producers of rigging the vote.

Last week, he emailed supporters claiming that results were getting manipulated to juice ratings:

The producers play games to get viewers and don't disclose the numbers. If they disclosed the numbers, it would be less of a game, but still suspect. If tomorrow, they claim I'm in the bottom 2 dance teams, including viewer votes, I believe that it's an outright lie....

I'm sure they want me in this dance-off to get higher Tuesday ratings, and they have preplanned it so that I win. If my leg acts up tomorrow, they will either have to announce another pair as being the lowest or send me home, and I don't think they will give me up.

He's since apologized:

I have been around the internet conspiracy theory forums for too long.

We know how easy it is to espouse a lot of ideas and build conspiracy theory. No conspiracy theory can be proven wrong, so there are always plenty of die-hard followers.

Yesterday I wrote my suspicions of the secret Dancing With The Stars audience vote tabulations. I wrote that the producers were liars, simply because I truly believed in that possibility, not because I had a shred of evidence.

I hurt a lot of honest people.

If anyone's manipulating the results, it's surely Woz, who's using his website, email list, and Facebook group to decimate the competition — at least the competition for online attention. Did you know that Lil' Kim was competing in this season? Belinda Carlisle? Lawrence Taylor? If you did, it's probably only because Woz has blogged about them. Will he dance on, despite his injury? Woz recently complained about the press's obsession with the health of his partner in founding Apple, Steve Jobs. Maybe he was just jealous his own health wasn't getting more attention.

(Photo by Janet Wozniak)

Still, he scored a modest 17 out of 30, and the judges told him he needed to work on things like "dance quality" and "endurance." Oh, please. This is America! No one succeeds on actual talent anymore. You just have to be liked. And who can't like a rotund dude who ends his dance with a Tom Selleck beefcake pose?

Watch for Woz's ex, comedienne Kathy Griffin, in the audience:

Woz was photographed leaving dancing practice with a cast on his left leg. His next dance will be "wild and fast and all-over crazy and fun, just like the first one," he told fans in an email that one republished on his Facebook page. Entertaintment Tonight reports that an ABC spokesperson has confirmed Woz's plans to keep competing.

Wild, fast, and crazy, with a fractured leg? That's the kind of braggadocio that led Woz to create Apple's first hit computers, the Apple I and Apple II three decades ago — and led him to enter the dance competition in the first place. But human bodies are not mutable digital objects, like the silicon chips and digital bits he manipulated into personal computers. We can admire his resilience even as we scratch our heads at his quixotic terpsichorean quest. A leg fracture isn't simply something you can debug. But this drama — geek obstinance versus corporeal decomposition — makes for must-see TV.

(Photo via Entertainment Tonight/Adrian Varnedoe/Pacific Coast News)

After Woz, as he's known in the Valley, pranced on stage with a pink feather boa and slung dance partner Karina Smirnoff around like an unruly piece of code, the judges grimaced. One said, "It was like watching a Teletubby going mad at a gay pride parade." But come on: Did the producers expect anything else when they put a portly billionaire on the show? At least Mark Cuban, Woz's rich-tech predecessor on the show, had a modicum of feline grace. All Woz has is a hundred-watt smile.

What was really funny: The jokes about Apple's Safari Web browser crashing, or a hostile judge not getting service at an Apple Store. Don't they know that Woz hasn't had a real role at the company for decades?

It's a phenomenon the geeks are already calling "Dancing with the Woz" and is potentially the greatest terpsichorean trainwreck in television history. Woz has entered the ABC dance competition to prove that anyone can learn some new steps, and his fans are already gearing up to stack the vote by any means necessary. Wozniak has asked tech-savvy viewers not to hack ABC's voting systems. If that happens, it will be just part of the circus that will make this a must-see.

When did computer-company founders become reality-TV contestants? When they stopped having anything resembling a real job. If hard-driving Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on technology's A list, then Woz, who dropped out of Apple to teach at a public school, and then returned to a life of studied Silicon Valley dilettantery, is surely on its D list.

Indeed, he's so on the D list that he dated My Life on the D List's Kathy Griffin for a while, before a surprise marriage (his fourth) to an Apple colleague last August.

Wags are already calling his pairing with dancer Karina Smirnoff "Beauty and the Beast." But Woz makes up for his schlumpy, bearded appearance with a lot of what American Idol's judges call "likeability." Unlike Jobs, who is obsessive about his privacy to the point of being a snarling jerk, Woz overshares to a degree that the Twitter generation finds charming. He's a bit of a prankster — which means we might have some on-air pratfalls to look forward to. He may not make for a conventional TV star, but he's perfect for the low expectations of today's reality lineup.

Obsessive fanboy Brian Tong of CNET infiltrated Woz's dance studio and interviewed him for the clip above. "If you ever want to focus on one thing and see how far you can go, this is the way to do it," Woz says. Here's the full segment from CNET's "The Apple Byte":

I'm going to tape that photo to my daughter's bedroom ceiling to discourage her from ever having sex.

(Photo by RobotSkirts)

"I was never going to leave HP for life. That's where I wanted to be forever," but Apple co-founder Steve Jobs launched a campaign that eventually persuaded Wozniak to strike off on his own. "Steve Jobs got all my friends and relatives to call me."

[News.com] (Photo by Eric Rhoads)

According to Woz, the pair may or may not have married under California's century-old confidential civil arrangement, under which no witnesses are necessary and the marriage record is kept private. Only the bride, groom or a court order can pry it loose, so no fear of pesky gossips going to the county clerk's office and pulling a public record. It's fairly popular amongst the Hollywood celebrity set who don't want their nuptials to go out over the wire. Of course, to get said confidential marriage, the parties have to be living together. So either way, Janet and Woz, mazel tov!

I was getting in my daily dose of TPiR when I noticed somebody in the VIP section (directly behind contestants row) that looked familiar. It was The Woz! They made him put "Steve" on his nametag, though.