When Stalking Steve Wozniak Pays Off

Waseef Akhtar was 14 years old when he got his hands on his first iPod — "an iPod Nano, third generation," he says with a tinge of pride.

The Riyadh, Saudi Arabia native, 20, has since been hooked on Apple products. He has collected a MacBook and several iPhones, and spent three months working as a sales associate at a local Apple Store. As his admiration for the company grew throughout the years, so did his fascination with the team behind it.

In February, in a whimsical 24-hour turn of events, Akhtar met Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak while the computer mogul passed through Riyadh. The meetup, and spontaneous hang-out sesh that followed, inspired Akhtar to write a memoir about their day together.

Now, after a few months of editing, A Day With the Woz is available for free on the iTunes Store.

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"I found out he was in town on a Sunday," Akhtar tells Mashable. "I met him on Monday. Then he was gone by Tuesday. Everything happened so quickly."

The story plays out a bit like a movie. Akhtar, a recent high school graduate, was browsing the Apple-themed blog Saudi Mac when he caught a retweet of Wozniak's Foursquare checkin at London's Heathrow Airport:

BA 263 to RUH. (@ Gate B48) http://t.co/zLS9MheA

— Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz) February 3, 2013

The tweet belied that Wozniak was traveling to Riyadh; Akhtar thought it was too good to be true.

"We never get any celebrities in this town," he says. "When I saw this tweet, I thought maybe he was passing through [Riyadh] on his way to Dubai or something. I didn't think he'd be staying here."

After some digging, Akhtar discovered that Wozniak was in fact staying in Riyadh to speak at a conference on e-learning — but only for two nights. He figured it would be his only chance to meet the man who helped design the products he'd spent half his life collecting. Then he realized something: the majority of Wozniak's tweets were Foursquare checkins, most of which included detailed arrival times, hotel names and, in some cases, room numbers.

For this particular visit, Wozniak tweeted his hotel — the Four Seasons, or "Kingdom Tower," in downtown Riyadh — along with the number 203.

Only a phone call separated Akhtar from one of his heroes. Cue nausea. "Well, I was ... I was very nervous. But in a good way," he says with a laugh.

He called the next day. The hotel receptionist transferred him immediately, to 203, and a familiar voice answered after just a few rings.

"I was speechless. But after I got over that, we started talking — about everything," Ahktar says, "about Apple, about how much I admired him. Everything."

Wozniak was feeling jet-lagged from his travels, Akhtar says, but agreed to meet him later in the day. He was scheduled to appear on a local TV news station that evening, and said he'd be free to talk to Akhtar in the hotel lobby beforehand. When Akhtar arrived, he spotted Wozniak standing near the receptionist's desk.

"So I just walked over and introduced myself. Again, I was pretty nervous."

After signing Ahktar's iPhone 5, and talking more about his travels, Wozniak asked Akhtar to accompany him to the TV interview.

"The drivers came, and there were three cars — one of which was, I think, a Mercedes S500," he says. "It was awesome."

The interview was brief. Ahktar stood behind the cameras as Wozniak talked about the e-learning conference, his visit to the Middle East and his thoughts on the new film, Jobs. After the show, Akhtar got to spend a few more minutes with him — this time, talking more about engineering and Akhtar's career goals. Soon, Wozniak's team rounded everyone up and returned to the Kingdom Tower, where he had a scheduled dinner with colleagues.

As quickly as it began, Akhtar's time with "the Woz" came to an end.

"All-in-all, it was incredible. As soon as I got back home I called everyone — my friends, cousins, family. I couldn't stop telling this amazing story about how I got to spend the day with Steve Wozniak," he says.

After the umpteenth time rehashing the story, one of his friends suggested he write it down; he had it well-memorized, after all. Ahktar agreed. It took some help from friends to edit — he had only read two books in his life prior to writing it: the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz — but it was eventually ready to bring to iTunes (naturally.)

Ahktar chose Aug. 11, Wozniak's birthday, to release the memoir online.

"Apple and Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs — they've always been huge inspirations for me," he says. "And meeting [Wozniak] and reading his book really changed my life. I'd love to work in Silicon Valley someday; I'm so much more inspired now to make that come true."

For now, though, he's just hoping the world enjoys his story. The 33-page memoir is available here.

Wozniak co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in 1976.

Images: Waseef Akhtar