I am typing this on a 2006 MacBook Pro, the very first pro Apple laptop with an Intel processing chip. The college me could only wish to afford such a beast of a machine. And here I am using it now to blog, some 16 years later. Because the keyboard is phenomenal to type on. This era of Apple keyboard is as good as it gets: excellent travel with superb stability.
The reason I have this old-as-heck MacBook Pro is because one of the campus labs (finally) retired a bunch from service. Of course, any time tech gets recycled, the vultures start to circle. I normally don't go for any of the Apple stuff, because I already have the latest laptop and professional display. But this particular MacBook Pro caught me eye, primarily because it was something I pined for way back when.
It's not unlike car guys buying their childhood hero cars after they've earned some money as an adult. Except I was able to get this MacBook Pro for absolutely free.
The laptop runs arguably the best macOS (or OS X, as it was back in the day) ever: 10.6 Snow Leopard. This was back in a time when major updates for macOS happens every few years, unlike the annual cadence of today. I'm surprised to find a copy of Snow Leopard is available for download at the Internet archive. Though how legit and legal that method is, I cannot say for sure.
What I can say is that it works, because I used that link to make a bootable USB stick to then do a clean macOS install. This vintage of MacBook Pro predates any Internet recovery methods, so the royal you must use an installation media to wipe the system.
I have to say it's pretty neat to touch this old tech again, and to see that it still works, for the most part. Modern websites no longer work because the browser/operating system is too out of date. But I don't need this for that. I'm only using this for the fantastic keyboard to type out stuff like this.
They don’t make them like this anymore.