Steve Wozniak's travel backpack is overflowing with gadgets

Why?

[Update] Hugh Stimson in the comments points out the things that Woz carries in his backpack that aren't in the photo:

the AirPort Express and MacBook Pro 85W magsafe adapter, which are out of sight in this photo,• bluetooth mouse,• binoculars,• projector connectors,• multiple Gameboy Lights (a Gameboy sold in Japan but never in the U.S.),• Gameboy link cables,• plenty of foreign AC adapters,• prism glasses for watching movies in bed,• sunglasses,• earplugs for concerts,• Ultimate Ears UE18 earplugs for flights,• Gameboy link cable,• tons of pencils for pencil games on flights,• tons of pens,• tons of sharpies,• tons of paint pens (signing),• red-blue-purple-yellow-green laser pointers,• credit cards,• hotel cards,• airline cards,• hard rock card,• medical cards,• small accessories like olloclip iPhone lens adapter,• Square,• flash keys,• flash media adapters,• cigarette lighter dual USB adapter,• audio doubler cable,• iPad USB/SD Card adapters,• toiletries for hotels,• batteries of many types (AA, AAA, CR2, CR128, odder types for things like my bag beeper for locating my suitcase)• eyedrops,• $2 bill pads,• pencil puzzles,• itineraries for upcoming travel...

• [AwesomeRobot]

  I hope he doesn’t get jumped as a result of this. 

  • [BarBarSeven]

    He should store them in a fanny pack… Nobody will mug him then.

• [Jerril]

  Why?

  Because he’s a gear whore? I mean, as a gear whore myself, that’s what I’m seeing.

  EDIT: or to put it another way “Because nobody stops him, nobody’s staged an intervention yet, and he hasn’t thrown out his back or destroyed his knees yet.”

• [Es See]

  Because he cant reach sexual climax without all of this set up perfectly and charging on his hotel room table?

• [hadlockk]

  “Almost every USB cable is retractable.”

  I’d like to know what kind of retractable USB cables a billionaire can get his hands on that doesn’t fucking break. Every retractable cable I’ve ever come in contact with, the retracting spring broke within two months of use, making is a pseudo-retractable cable.

  • [xzzy]

    Going go guess he buys them in packs of 100 from monoprice and tosses ‘em when they go bad.

• [xzzy]

  I can’t read the diminutive green text very well, but I think that’s not just Woz’s stuff, but his wife’s as well. Travelling with a spouse can really inflate the amount of gadgets taken on vacation.

  Going to guess several of the devices are jailbroken as well.

  What I want to know is how he charges all that stuff at once without starting any fires. The iPads and MiFi’s in particular draw absurd amounts of power. I’d really like to know what his hybrid power/usb strips are and what the output on the usb ports is.

  I’ve got a road trip coming up and have a handful of similar devices that have to come along, and digging up portable ways to keep them powered has been quite a chore.

  • [Cyran0]

     ”What I want to know is how he charges all that stuff at once without starting any fires.”

    I’ve actually come close to that, myself.
    Melted an octopus running several devices.

    I’m at work till 11 PM Central, I’ll post a pic of it when I get home.
    (You’ll understand how lucky I was to wake up in the middle of the night to find that. Yikes!)

    • [Cyran0]

      As promised: Slightly-out-of-focus camera phone pic.

      As you can see, there was quite a bit of liquification, and some pretty gnarly scorching on the housing.
      Please note both the black and orange plugs to either side of the adapter: those are all now fully fused and have proven too bothersome to attempt trying to separate, so screw it.

• [jerwin]

  Half of this stuff is Janet’s. I wonder if they have a deal– “I’ll only use more than one device if you carry them for me.” And Steve, not realizing the elegant simplicity of having only one or two devices, cheerfully obliges.

• [Rider]

  Even for two people that’s an absurd amount of stuff to carry.

• [user1234567]

  Most of that kinda makes sense, but 7 smart phones and he still has dedicated GPS? Must have had a bad experience or something…

  • [xzzy]

    Dedicated GPS is going to have its own maps installed. There are offline map apps out there, but in my experience they suck or want absurd subscription fees. 

    • [Haakon IV]

       I don’t know if it’s Woz’s use case, but I can get 8-10 hours of battery life out of a dedicated GPS recording a track. My smart phone is lucky to last for 90 minutes running continuous GPS.

      • [retepslluerb]

        I think a separate GPS recording device makes sense even if one carries a smartphone, for the same reason.  But those are the size of a film roll. They can be also used to find your way back.

        But carrying a multitude of GPS enabled phones and tablets AND another dedicated GPS unit? That’s like wearing suspenders and a belt. 

        http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/quotes?qt=qt0317980

        • [Chris]

          …On a pair of pants that has an elastic waist with a built in drawstring. 

           I guess having multiple smart phones on multiple carriers is just in case he doesn’t get reception and doesn’t want to relocate a few hundred yards?

        • [retepslluerb]

          @chris Not a problem – Mr.  Wozniak  has a Segway, I believe.  

• [lknope]

  Sometimes TSA takes a long time unpacking it. A couple of times they asked me to take out everything electronic and I asked for seven bins, all of which I filled (only 2 half-size), plus my MacBook Pro, plus the bag. All of that through the X-ray machine. Then repack it.

  It annoys me just to have to take off my shoes.  It’s odd to me that it’s worth it to anybody to cart around 50 pounds of gadgets. 

• [Paul Renault]

  So, which device did he use to take the photo?

  • [Paul Coleman]

    Probably his Google glasses.

• [A.X. Ian]

  Aspergers is strong with Woz

• [Jackalope]

  Woz’s vast array of personal technology makes him dominant over the less-equipped engineers.

• [angusm]

  “Uh oh, Mr Wozniak just checked in. Better power up the emergency generator and warn the other guests that wi-fi’s going to be a bit slow for the next three days.”

• [niktemadur]

  Steve Wozniak’s travel backpack is overflowing with gadgets.
  Why?

  Because he’s from the internet.  And he’s here to help.

• [ckoerner]

  I like Woz and am only joshing here, but how does he get anything done? Sure, fiddling with all that stuff results in a huge dopamine hit but with little productive output. More power to him, he can spend his time (and attention) as he wishes, but sheesh!

  • [Peppermint]

    Well, from what I gather from this post and the one at Gizmodo, fiddling with stuff is actually his job?

• [royaltrux]

  That stuff is going to look so quaint in 20 years.

  • [franko]

    but he upgrades constantly, so he’ll always be current.

    • [Chris]

      All those gadgets will get retired within a year. Well I guess the gameboy and cables managed to hang on though. Where’s the DS?

• [Rudy Moore]

  From the jump, my mind’s STILL exploding about Woz carrying multiple Gameboy Lights (as in a short-production-run Japan-exclusive backlit model, not the incandescent lights themselves) and link cables to play only… Tetris.

  • [selfish]

    No way! Tetris is STILL the best game on the original gameboy. 

• [cservant]

  Why two mutewatches?  Isn’t one enough?

• [TWX]

  I just took a personal inventory of tech/geek stuff…

  Samsung Galaxy SII (Hercules/T-mobile) – personal cell phone
  Motorola V860 “Barrage” (Verizon) – work’s phone, they won’t give us stipends for ours
  Gerber 400 series multitool in belt pouch
  Mini-Magline 2xAA in belt pouch
  Four screwdriver bits – Phillips 2, Phillips 3, small flat-head, large flat-head

  Occasionally I carry a very small Lithium-ion powered screwdriver and it’s just easier to keep the bits in my pocket.  I also occasionally carry a six-in-one modular screwdriver, both are based on predicted need.

  Sometimes when my wife and I travel overseas we bring her Lenovo Thinkpad X301, buy a foreign SIM card for one of the phones, and tether the laptop to it if it’s cheaper than using hotel wifi.  We obviously also bring charging equipment, but have gotten into the “iGo” stuff so we don’t have to carry a whole lot.  The phones get put into airplane mode and we use headphones to listen to music and can read books on them, and the phones let us check in.  We can also download maps for certain areas (like Paris when we went there) so we don’t need another GPS for when we know with certainty where we’re going.

  I used to carry a whole lot of crap.  2m Ham radio, miniature POTS phone with a cable with alligator clips, small meter, pocket butane torch, camera, Palm, several different sharpies, some cable, etc.  I realized I never used any of it.  Once the smartphone with all of the basic communications features and many of the network-connected features that I wanted was available then I could carry a lot less.

  I thought that was the point of the smartphone- it essentially did everything that one used to use three or four devices for, and one now didn’t have to carry those discrete components when the all-in-one solution would do 90%+ of what one could conceivably need…

  • [Justin Sabe]

    I think I saw you on the cover the Cyberpunk Fakebook

• [Hugh Stimson]

  It has been pointed out that a few of these things belong to his partner Janet and that is true, but he also lists the items which *didn’t* make it into the photo, which include:

  the AirPort Express and MacBook Pro 85W magsafe adapter, which are out of sight in this photo,• bluetooth mouse,• binoculars,• projector connectors,• multiple Gameboy Lights (a Gameboy sold in Japan but never in the U.S.),• Gameboy link cables,• plenty of foreign AC adapters,• prism glasses for watching movies in bed,• sunglasses,• earplugs for concerts,• Ultimate Ears UE18 earplugs for flights,• Gameboy link cable,• tons of pencils for pencil games on flights,• tons of pens,• tons of sharpies,• tons of paint pens (signing),• red-blue-purple-yellow-green laser pointers,• credit cards,• hotel cards,• airline cards,• hard rock card,• medical cards,• small accessories like olloclip iPhone lens adapter,• Square,• flash keys,• flash media adapters,• cigarette lighter dual USB adapter,• audio doubler cable,• iPad USB/SD Card adapters,• toiletries for hotels,• batteries of many types (AA, AAA, CR2, CR128, odder types for things like my bag beeper for locating my suitcase)• eyedrops,• $2 bill pads,• pencil puzzles,• itineraries for upcoming travel… 

  That’s rather a lot of things.

• [franko]

  why? this is WOZ we’re talking about… the gadget geek’s gadget geek. like we even need to ask?

• [Dan Century]

  ‘Cause he needs a good boy phone, and a naughty boy phone… many naughty boy phones. 

• [Gabe]

  Four Mifi’s? In addition to 7 smartphones, most of which can probably tether? I’m all for the geekery of his stash, but I thought progress would mean that he could somehow minimize the need for 11 mobile internet connections.

  • [Chris]

    Maybe he has some way of stacking all those connections so he can get to an actual landline equivalent broadband speed.

• [Arys]

  I think we’re gonna need a bigger backpack….

• [RedRadish]

  looks like woz is still the ultimate nerd =P

• [BarBarSeven]

  Seems like this is the antithesis of Steve Jobs hatred of wires.  Complete yin & yang here.

  For me, I like the fact I just have one iPhone… No need for anything else.  Perfect!

• [voiceinthedistance]

  Somethings not right here.

  Where’s his Zune?

• [MarkV]

  This is Asperger’s or OCD, not the result of rational thought or planning, so asking “why?” makes no sense.

  • [MarkV]

    Also, his “Ultimate Ears UE18 earplugs for flights” are actually $1,350 earbuds.

  • [penguinchris]

    I have Asperger’s and I over-pack and carry loads of gadgets I don’t really need when traveling too, but hadn’t heard of this being an Asperger’s thing. A couple of other comments referred to that too. I wonder how that works.

• [notasheep]

  I think I’ve reached a point of shame at calling myself a geek if this is the extreme end of geekdom. I think it’s the equivalent of seeing an end-stage alkie in a bar and givng up drinking.

• [autark]

  I likes me some gadgets when traveling (cell, cameras, laptop, gps), but damn that’s just ridiculous.

• [pjcamp]

  Forget the junk. Show me the backpack he manages to cram the junk into. I’ve been looking for a supersize bookbag.

• [RussSL]

  Забавно, если не сказать бОльшего ! :-)

• [Moriah]

  I want to know what pencil puzzles he does.  Anyone know of some good ones to try?

• [anonymouscoward]

  I’m a little troubled by some of the disparaging comments here. Is what happened to  Steve Wozniak in 1981 still uncommon knowledge after all this time?

  The man is almost a personal incarnation of the old Silicon Valley DIY computer culture. He’s living the dream. He isn’t hurting anyone. Let him be.