I ordered my first MacBook Pro in July of 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?

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 ubuntu and installed it on my laptop.

One of the problems I quickly ran into in my Linux-only adventure was that multimedia sucked. It's nothing like 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 or Internet, so Netflix was my source 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). I had a website or two that I needed to make graphics for.

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.

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.

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 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.

• I lived next to an Apple Store. I don't know why I didn't just go in. But even like today, I like ordering my stuff online.
• Even I knew back then not to bother with a MacBook or MacBook Air even though I could have saved some money.
  • Bonus point: The $999 MacBook Air in 2020 was 11“, Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, and 64 GB “flash storage”.
  • Bonus, bonus point: The $999 MBA is just like the laptops in 2020. You can't upgrade after purchase.
  • Surprisingly, according to EveryMac, it had support for High Sierra. Now if you could actually install and use High Sierra on 64 GB of “flash storage”, I'd be more impressed.
• Yes, I'm glad I got the MBP. I was able to replace the hard drive to an SSD, change out the battery a few years ago, and even upgrade the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB to 16 GB.
• You kids have it much better these days.

And that concludes getting my first MacBook Pro.