It's the first-date icebreaker, Apple-style: "Show me your iPhone apps, and I'll show you mine."
Like thousands of fellow Apple fanboys desperately seeking fangirls, 27-year-old product manager Ayush Agarwal jumped on the Cupidtino dating site and began looking for love. Mac-centric messages started flying. A meet-up was arranged at, of course, an Apple Store. And just like the external mouse they were unveiling that day, things started to click.
"The first thing we talked about was apps," Agarwal said. "I was apartment hunting, so I showed her PadMapper. Then we talked about ‘Angry Birds' for a bit. Meeting through Cupidtino told me she wasn't just a Mac user — she was a passionate Mac user. So I didn't feel awkward talking to her about my Mac for an hour, whereas other people might think I'm talking too much about my Mac."
Agarwal, who's still friends with the woman, has a lot of company. With 28,000 active members, Cupidtino has become a gathering place for the Apple-intoxicated to share their Mac passions, swap iPad stories, bad-mouth PC users and maybe, just maybe, find life's ultimate app.
It all started last spring, when founder Mel Sampat got into an argument with his girlfriend over, yup, his new iPad.
"I was super excited, and I kept pushing it toward her over the dinner table," said the 31-year-old San Francisco app developer. "She just didn't get it. She's such a PC. She punches numbers for PG&E and meets with regulators. I'm this geek startup guy developing iPhone apps at home in my PJs. We're the typical PC-Apple couple."
To Sampat, the iPad was the portal to a new age of computing. To his girlfriend, it was a toy.
"I said, half-jokingly, ‘I can't be with you. Next time I date someone, I'll be sure to ask if she's a Mac or a PC.'"
The next morning in the shower, said Sampat, a light bulb went off. "I realized if I were single and went on a date today, the first thing I'd ask is, ‘What apps are on your phone?' ‘Angry Birds'? They have a lot of free time. AmEx? They're making sure their finances are in order. I rolled up my sleeves and started the site."
A day after he launched the site in June, more than 6,000 users had signed up. After a blogger picked it up, traffic started climbing. After all, it was free to join, free to set up a profile, free to reach out to other users and only $4.79 a month to receive messages back.
"We pegged it," Sampat said, "to the price of a venti mocha at Starbucks in Cupertino," a reference to Apple's hometown in California, which inspired the name. The site sports a clean Apple-like design, requires users to sign up through the Apple-created browser Safari, and gives devotees a forum to, well, bash PC users.
"We needed a dating site like Cupidtino because I honestly think Apple people are a different kind of people," said Apple person Ronni Estrada, a 23-year-old pharmacy assistant with Kaiser in Southern California. "PC people are kind of naive" ... but Apple people just kind of get it."
For now, Cupidtino remains largely a labor of love for Sampan and his co-founder, a Seattle programmer who remains anonymous to protect his job at a major e-commerce company. They say they're talking with several angel investors, but for now the site pays the men a modest salary, though not enough to live on.
Visitors are greeted on the home page with "Meet an Apple fanboy or girl," then encouraged to post their photo and answer several profile questions, including "I became a Mac when "..." — to which user CuteT40 replied "I was BORN a ‘Mac'" ... but started ‘using' in 1990.
From there you're on your own.
"Sharing our love of Apple is a nice starting point," said Lindsey Arasmith, a 25-year-old college student from Sunnyvale who was weaned on Apple products by her programmer dad. "It's not like we're just about Apple. But it's comforting to have that base to fall back on, so that it's not a completely blind date."
