Updated: July 27, 2024. Originally written: July 30, 2020
I ordered my first MacBook Pro in July 2011. I still have the original order email:
Why did I order a MacBook Pro, especially being "anti-Apple" for a large portion of my life? Great question! Let's get into it.
At the time, I was working for a Windows web hosting company. All we did was Windows web hosting. I worked with Windows day in and day out. Things about Windows started to annoy me. The registry, the way the UI and UX worked, how unstable and unreliable it was. Now, I was no stranger to Linux. I used it quite a lot. However, this job pushed me over the top. One day, I came home from work and I said screw it and downloaded Fedora and installed it on my laptop. Looking back, Windows sucks more today (Windows 11) than it did back in 2011 (Windows 7).
One of the problems I quickly ran into in my Linux-only adventure was that multimedia sucked. It's nothing like you kids have today. Back in 2011, Netflix still used Silverlight to stream videos. There were different hacks to try to get it to work using WINE and Firefox. Eventually, someone released a custom package that bundled Firefox, Silverlight, and WINE. This kinda worked. By “kinda”, I mean it worked for a bit and then Netflix would update their code, break it, and then I'd have to wait for an updated version. YouTube was also still primarily flash in these days too. I didn't pay for cable TV, so Netflix and YouTube were my sources of entertainment.
Let's face it. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and GIMP are not drop-in replacements for most productivity software. Work used the pre-cursor to Office 365 called Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). This meant that I would have to use the web version of Outlook and at the time, OWA only offered the "lite" version for Linux. I also was running a few websites that I needed to make graphics for. There was nothing like Canva or Photopea available so I used Photoshop heavily.
So July rolled around and my Netflix solution had broken for the umpteenth time that week and I was done. I just wanted my stuff to work. I wanted to use Linux because I was so done with Windows. But I knew Mac OS X had Office support and Netflix support, so I bit the bullet. I went to apple.com, found the base model MBP and ordered it.
So, according to my Apple order and Barclaycard financing emails, I made my purchase around 10:40 AM on Friday, July 8, 2011. On July 12 or July 13, it arrived. It was delivered to my apartment's office. Later that day, I had my new MacBook Pro in hand.
And because I purchased before Lion was released, I got a free upgrade to Lion! I did have to pay for Mountain Lion, I believe. My memory is a little fuzzy here because I do remember getting Mountain Lion. This was around the time when Apple started changing the policy on charging for Mac OS X upgrades.
9 years later, here's what you can get for MacBook Pros (this isn't every MBP as the new Apple store site isn't laid out as nice).
As you can see, Apple kept up with inflation (for 2020, before "greedflation" took over) and now has a $1,299 price point. You get a quad core, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB SSD. You're getting a lot more bang for your buck in 2020. While it seems like things haven't really changed in 2024, you are still getting a better deal than you were in 2011.