Small Town News

Exchange student, host dad go to New York City for iPad release

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Florian Brunbauer, a local Rotary foreign exchange student from Austria, was one of the first 10 people to receive an Apple iPad in New York City after standing in line all night.

Apple released the new iPad on Saturday, April 3. The trip was also a surprise for his host dad, Tim Nobles, who Brunbauer said is a big Apple fan.

"I thought it would be nice to surprise him," Brunbauer said.

Brunbauer, who has developed applications for the iPhone, also created two of the little more than 1,000 apps for the iPad.

"I thought it would be nice to go to an Apple store and stand in line to get the first one," he said.

At first, Brunbauer said he thought about going to the Apple store in Reno because it is the closest, but then considered going to San Francisco.

If he were to go to San Francisco and would already be traveling, Brunbauer said he started thinking about New York City. "Then I thought why not go to the nicest Apple store," he said.

Located on Fifth Avenue, the Apple store can be easily identified by its large glass cube. The store itself is located underground, Brunbauer said.

He planned the trip with help from his host mom, Jeana, who rearranged Nobles' schedule.

When the family headed to Reno, under the guise of a shopping trip, Brunbauer said Nobles was doing work on his laptop and didn't know they were at the airport until they were in the parking lot.

After meeting with an Apple client, Brunbauer said he started standing in line at 8 p.m. He said Nobles stood with him for a while, but went to the hotel to sleep.

Brunbauer was sixth in line and said there were only 15 people waiting for most of the night. All but two of them were from Europe, he said.

Usually, Brunbauer said the New York City Apple store is open 24-hours, but the store closed from midnight to 9 a.m. for the iPad launch.

People even stopped by the store to shop around 3 and 4 a.m. and wondered what was going on.

Brunbauer said staff put up huge dark walls around the glass cube so people couldn't see what was happening. However, Brunbauer said the people standing in line found a small place where they could see inside.

He said there were hundreds of Apple employees that came in for the event, and those standing in line could see people inside carrying iPads.

By the time the store opened, Brunbauer said a large crowd started gathering outside.

Only the first 10 people were allowed inside. He said there is a huge glass, spiral staircase that leads people around the store.

"All around the spiral stair case there were about 100 Apple employees, all dressed in their blue iPad shirts, cheering for us. It was an awesome sight and experience and it felt really good after all those hours of waiting," Brunbauer said.

Brunbauer said people were individually taken to the genius bar and taken care of by three Apple people.

After he took a one-hour private tour from an Apple employee, Brunbauer was approached by a video company agent hired by Apple.

"I was led into a Apple employee-only security area and prepared to give a video interview and app demo to Apple," he said.

Brunbauer creates apps and sells them on his own. While the group was standing in line, word had spread that he was an iPhone and iPad developer and had created two of the apps.

One of the apps he created for the iPad is for subtasks designed for people to keep track of their schedules.

Due to the confidentiality behind the iPad's release and the fact he didn't have an iPad to work on, Brunbauer said he is still developing the apps because he can now see how they look on the screen and how the apps actually work.

While in New York, Brunbauer got an iPad 64GB wifi and bought three cases and a dock for it.

"I've used the iPad quite a lot already for mails, watching movies, listening to music, surfing the web, using apps, and tried making presentations and my first thought is: I love it! It much more intuitive and beautiful than an iPhone," he said.

Brunbauer said Nobles did not get an iPad on the trip as he was waiting for the release of the iPad 3G released on Friday, April 30.

The trip to New York City was the first for both Brunbauer and Nobles.

Brunbauer said they did a lot of sightseeing and walked around a lot.

When he returns to Austria, Brunbauer will have one year left of high school and has to do his mandatory one-year military service.

Afterwards, Brunbauer said he would like to come back to the United States and go to college. He said he would like to attend Stanford University.

Even though he has a lot of computer experience, Brunbauer said he would like to keep the apps creation as a side job and study science research.

Although he could make a living developing apps and working on computers, he said the market is fast moving and he could be out of a job.

During his stay in the United States, Brunbauer lives with three families. He will participate in the 2010 LHS graduateon ceremony and will travel back to Austria in the summer.



Copyright 2010 Lassen County Times, Susanville, California. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2010 Lassen County Times Susanville, California. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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