Full disclosure: I’m an Apple Fanboy. I grew up with Apple computers. I’ve stuck with Apple through thick and thin (through the particularly dark period in the mid 1990s). You could say I’ve drunk from the Kool Aid and am firmly stuck in the Steve Jobs “Reality Distortion Field”. What can I say? I love my Apple Computers.

The first time I ever saw an Apple Computer live and in the flesh was in 2nd grade at Punahou School (where I attended K-12th grade in Hawaii). The teacher carted out a big ungainly yellow cart and on top of it was a funny looking machine. It was an Apple II+. We’d go on to spend a lot of time using Apple II’s throughout grade school.

It wasn’t until a few years later, Christmas of 1984 to be exact, that my Dad brought home an Apple IIe of our very own. It was a family gift, but I was probably the most excited out of all of us. The monitor was the classic monochrome greeen-screen. There was no mouse (of course). I also remember receiving copies of Karateka, the Microsoft Flight Simulator and a typing tutor program based on characters from the comic strip “BC”. I have fond memories of playing Ultima III and IV on this machine, writing book reports with Broderbund’s “Bank Street Writer” and messing around with BASIC (there was also a lot of trading of games on the playground, but I’ll gloss over that).

In 1985, my Dad brought home a computer that seemed light years ahead of our Apple IIe. It was the original 128k Mac. Technically the 128k Mac was Dad’s “work” computer. He would bring it home on the weekends and weeknights in this large, square padded “bag” with a shoulder strap (certainly befitting the name “Luggable”). Playing with MacPaint for the first time was a revelation. Pure awesomness. Dad would later upgrade to the 512k and 512ke (”Fat Mac”) models. Meanwhile I was putting in time with MacPaint, Ancient Art of War and Dark Castle.

In 1988, Dad, probably tired of us kids playing with his work machine caved and bought a Mac Plus for us. This was the first computer I had with a hard drive (40MB baby!). The hard drive was the same footprint as the Mac Plus and the computer sat right atop it like a pedastal. The Mac Plus was also one of my early introductions to the world of modems and the pre-internet BBS system. Favorite games included SimCity, Pirates and Breach! I’d also lug the Mac over to friends for some pre-Doom LAN gaming. We’d link up 4 machines and play Maze Wars and Trek among other games.

In 1990 I headed off to college. A college kid has to be equiped with a proper machine! The sales guy at the college bookstore tried to sell me on a 286 or 386 PC, but I went for the Mac SE. This was the machine I wrote most of my college papers on. It was also the machine that introduced me to the internet. I had a speedy connection to the Occidental College network. I learned the intricacies of unix, pine and gopher. I saw friends descend into MUDDs. Among my favorite games on this system: Civilization, Strategic Conquest, Warlords.

1994 saw me off to Graduate school at Harvard which meant time for an upgrade. This time around, I went with a Quadra 630 (among the last of the pre-PowerPC macs). This was also my first color monitor a 14″ Sony CRT. I did most of my graduate coursework on this machine. Favorite games on this system included Civilization 2 (I think) and Warlords 2.

Two years later (2006) while in Berkeley, CA (and now happily married), it was time to upgrade again. I wanted a machine that wasn’t too expensive but that could handle some digital audio processing (I was into writing and recording music at the time). The Power Mac 7200/90 fit the bill. It could handle Cubase VST, the sequencing/digital recording application I was using at the time. As for gaming, I remember playing a few titles like Marathon, Myth, Doom and Quake.

In 1997, when I returned to Cambridge, MA to take my graduate oral exams, I needed a laptop for my long study sessions in the library. The situation for Apple was looking bleak at that point and instead of keeping the faith, I cracked and purchased a Toshiba Satellite laptop. I hated the machine (though the games were great: Xcom, Masters of Orion).

But by 1999 when it was time to update my desktop, things were looking good again. Amelio was out. Jobs was back in. Apple was starting to launch some interesting and inspired hardware again. The famous transluscent iMacs had been launched as well as their playful counterparts the clamshell laptops. I ended up getting a PowerMac G4 Tower (the “Yikes!” model). It was a great purchase and the machine held up for a long time. The best game on this machine, by far, was Starcraft.

A couple years later, my wife Pam needed a laptop for medical school. We finally purchased our first Mac laptop, a G3 600Mhz white MacBook in 2001 (right after 9/11). I never cared much for this machine. The plastic gave off an odd smell that got worse with time. I think we ended up giving it to my mother-in-law

While I was wedded to the Mac platform for productivity, web surfing and creativity, it left something to be desired as a gaming machine (wow, there’s a news flash). During this period I bought a cheap eMachines box (for Battlefield, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Planetside, etc.), PS2 and PSP. Gaming just wasn’t the Mac’s forte at this point.

The Power Mac G4 Yikes didn’t get replaced for 6 years in part because of the relative slowdown in PowerPC releases (perhaps this hastened the switch to Intel chips in 2006/2007). I decided to purchase a Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 in early 2005 when I was working for Ziff Davis/1up.com. The machine was a beast. Very heavy. Fans were loud, but the computer was very, very fast.

When I started Fanpop in 2006 with Dave Lu, Cliff Szu and later Michael Chu, I picked up a 1.6 GHz dual core MacbookPro in early 2006. This was my first Intel-based Mac. This was my startup machine and it shows. The labels on the keyboard are nearly rubbed off (they’re just dark smudges at this point). This sucker also ran hot. So hot you really couldn’t keep it on your lap.

Pam’s smelly white MacBook also got replaced thereafter in 2008. The new one is much better. No smell!

And finally in 2009, I decided it was time to downsize. I picked up a Mac mini and retired the G5 Mac later in the year.

I also replaced the 2006 MacBook Pro with the 2.6 GHz revision that came out in early 2009.

And later that year I built my first PC box from components a MicroATX machine in an Antec P180 tower (for my MAME arcade cabinet).

And that’s it for my list of computers I’ve owned (1 Apple, 10 Macs, 3 PCs).

In addition to the numerous Apple Computers above, we’ve also had a few iPods, iPhones and most recently, the iPad.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years plus of Apple computing for me, but it looks like that’s the case. Now the real extra credit assignment is to figure out how much I’ve spent on Apple products in inflation adjusted dollars!

Note: Thanks to the excellent site Apple History for providing me with info about many of the old Apple computer models!

Sure we’ve all heard of Twitter, Scribd, Justin.tv and any other slew of well-covered startups. But have you heard about a company called Zimbio? Probably not. I’d bet most people would be surprised to hear that Zimbio is a top 100 site in the U.S. (according to web metrics site Quantcast.com). That puts them right in the neighborhood of well-known brands like Time.com and NBC.com with about 8 million monthly U.S. visitors.

Funadvice is another site that has managed to stay out of the spotlight despite being a top 500 site (with an estimated 3 million monthly U.S. visitors).  That puts them in the neighborhood of much higher profile (and presumably better-funded) sites like Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo.com and high-profile dating site Eharmony.com.

So what’s the point to all of this? Well, it tells me that for every site that’s “in the spotlight” there are an equal number of “under the radar” sites that are pulling in comparable traffic (my own site fanpop would fall into the “under the radar” category). These “under the radar” sites may be less sexy in the eyes of the Tech Media, but the traffic numbers don’t lie. Assuming many of them are bootstrapped or lightly staffed they are potentially pulling in some significant revenue. Take Zimbio, for instance. Quantcast pegs them at ~ 40 million monthly pageviews in the U.S. (100 million globally). Ignoring the international traffic, 40 million pageviews should yield 80 million ad impressions assuming 2 ad units per page. Even at a relatively modest $1 net cpm (conservative estimate since the average cpm should be higher if they are monetizing the site well) you’re looking at $80,000/month in U.S. ad revenue alone. Assuming they are able to monetize their global traffic at those rates, you have an even more compelling story. And…assuming a modest staff, you may be looking at a profitable business.

So one exercise I like to recommend to my fellow entrepreneurs is to periodically browse the Quantcast Top 1000 sites. You’ll see the usuall cast of characters in the Top 50. But even beyond that, you’ll uncover some really interesting sites; sites that you’ve never heard off but that are pulling in some crazy traffic. You’ll be even more fascinated as you run up into the 200s, 300s, 400s. It’s a great way to get some additional insight and perspective into what kinds of successful websites are out there, above and beyond the sites that everyone knows and talks about, and it might even help get you thinking about your next startup.