What comes to mind when you think about an Apple product that you wish you had when it was still new? For me, there are two things on my Apple wish list that really only made sense to own when they were modern.
Vintage wish list item #1
I bought my first Mac at the end of summer in 2009. Apple still sold laptops in polycarbonate, but aluminum was clearly the direction of the future. A few months prior, a friend was deciding which Mac to buy for college.
I encouraged her to buy the white polycarbonate MacBook because I thought it looked cooler and I always wanted one. She bought the silver aluminum one because it was the better computer. Both 13-inch laptops were called MacBook without the Pro.
A few months later, it was time for me to make the same decision. Was I going to put my (grandmother’s) money where my mouth was and buy the polycarbonate one?
I don’t remember what my thought process was at the time, but suffice to say my first Mac was the original 13-inch MacBook Pro. It was basically the aluminum 13-inch MacBook from 2008, but it had the SD card reader from the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Other freshmen at my college had the white polycarbonate MacBook. Older students had dated-looking white or black MacBooks.
For me, it was the last white polycarbonate MacBook design with the rounded body that I thought looked so cool. Once I was in the market for a Mac, it never really made sense to own if the aluminum MacBook was within reach. Still, I wish I had owned one before it became outdated.
Vintage wish list item #2
Another Apple product from the same era also comes to mind: the white iPhone 3GS. I knew exactly one person who owned this iPhone when it was new, and I thought it was so cool. The black front glass and the white plastic back combo was basically the iPhone version of the rounded polycarbonate MacBook I liked so much.
The first iPhone that I owned was the belatedly released replacement: the white iPhone 4. I bought it on May 4, 2011 (Star Wars Day), which was just a few days after it was released. That also happened to be almost a year after the black iPhone 4 was released.
Unlike the MacBook situation, I never saw a white iPhone 3GS and wished I had it instead. The iPhone 4S was released a few months later, so the iPhone 3GS in any color was old news. When it was new, though, it said “cool” to me in a way that future iPhones would not.
For both products, I think it’s a relaxed and less serious design while still being premium that appealed so much to me.
What about you? Is there an Apple product that you wish you could have owned when it was new? Share yours on social and in the comments!
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