I don't understand why news outlets are making such a big deal of this. Amazon have offered software downloads for a while now. Previously it was just Windows software; now they also have Mac software. It is not like it is unprecedented for a website to offer Mac software downloads.
You probably should have continued reading. Given the context I'm pretty sure that the author meant "Even though I hadn't...". See this quote a few lines later:
"Now, one year later, after writing 8622 lines of code in Scala"