I’m SUPER excited to announce that the day after WWDC on June 6 I’ll be hosting a special live podcast and even with Noah Rubin, Sam Kohl and Jon Prosser to talk Apple announcements, do some giveaways and games, and more! Brought to you by CleanMyMac X, Genius Bar Goes Drk tickets are on sale now!! Head to geniusbargoesdrk.com!!!
I gotta thank you soo much Luke, I recently purchased a "flashy folder" 2013 21.5" iMac with a slightly chipped screen on the bezel for $50! Turns out it has the MTO optional i7 4770 cpu and GTX 750M gpu!! I got it local from the original owner because it's stock PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD apparently failed when they went to wipe it before sale! Woot Woot! Sooo.... I had to completely gutt it, replace the NVMe SSD, max out the 8gb of ram to 16gb, and also added a 500gb SATA SSD for extra storage. It's currently running Catalina super duper snappy! I am very pleased with the project to say the least. All for just an overall $90 total investment, and while I intentionally wanted to eventually sell it? I'm really hard pressed to just go ahead and keep it strictly for audio production (I'm also a musician). Anyway, I wouldn't of even attempted something like this if not for your superb and inspiring content, and well also OWC's tutorial vids. Ha! Thank you Luke! P.S. If you are ever wanting to dive deeper into vintage Mac content? I have an original (RevB) Bondi Blue iMac, a G4 tower w/ (gynormous) beige box apple external storage, a G5 tower w/ 20" cinema display (the display stays here tho ha!), and a late 2008 iMac w/ 6gb ram that I was about to a SSD upgrade on for my son : ) Literally all living within my hallway closet! Bwahahah! Cheers from North Carolina! ☺
Surprised you didn't mention that the very first MacBooks had 32-bit Core Duo CPUs, which is probably the most crippling issue, even if you want to install Linux on them.
I was surprised he didn't mention that, either. I found one in an e-waste bin and thought it would be a fun project to put Linux on it, but I had forgotten (or probably just never realized) that these original MacBook Pros were 32-bit.
Currently playing around with one, it's a pity really because it looks brand new... but yes, 32bit only and 2GB RAM max, plus the horrible ATI x1600 that even Windows refuses to work with. With a lot of trying and failing various OSes I managed to get Windows 8 with Bootcamp drivers onto it as the most bearable system, with a SSD it even feels kinda nice as long as you just do very mundane things. But UA-cam is already too much for that poor GPU and the crippling RAM. Serves basically as an iTunes radio now for listening to podcasts and audiobooks... there's still a fairly recent and usable iTunes version for windows 8 32bit, definitely better than the vintage version you get for the max supported macOS.
Or the fact that the 2007 ones were equally useless as they are hardware limited to El Capitan because the T7xxx CPUs do not support instruction sets in later versions, thus locked to 10.11 while 2008s are able to happily go to Ventura, albeit slow as fuck
I will say one thing, unlike the 2011 MacBook Pros, the 2007 and early 2008 models got a proper recall for the GPU issues they experienced. If you can find a recalled 07/08 Pro, their GPUs are replaced with a revised model, and the issues of graphical artifacts or no boot are completely fixed. The only way I’ve found to tell the difference is if they have a green sticker in the RAM bay, or if the GPU die has a 603 or 604 model number, vs. 600, 601, or 602.
That's all down to nVidia - nVidia had a problem, they fixed it, done. Apple replaced boards free of charge for four years I think, maybe longer if you pushed them. AMD NEVER released a fixed version of their crappy 2011 era chips. So Apple board swapped with replacements which would eventually fail. Poop.
Honestly it blows my mind sometimes to thing that the original iPhone was concurrent with Mac OS X Tiger and the Pre-unibody MacBooks. The iPhone lives in the 3GS Snow Leopard era in my mind and its hard to believe that some people were setting up iPhones on those MacBooks running Tiger
I remember setting up my 3GS on a white, plastic MacBook with the Intel Core Duo processor. It didn't even have the core 2 duo, it was the original core duo model. It's amazing to think that when that computer was brand new, it was the fastest computer my high school self had ever used.
As someone who also remembers that time, it wasn’t that out of the ordinary here in NZ; mostly because when iPhones started to become prevalent, a lot of people were still rocking the first-gen 15" MBPs.
My mom STILL uses her 2010 15 inch MBP she bought new as her main laptop. She uses it at least 2-3 times a week with a light workflow. I swapped the 320 gig HD with a 256 gig SSD and upgraded to 8 GB of memory back in 2016. It has 86% battery health and about 350 cycles on the ORIGINAL battery. That thing is a solid performer. I could honestly daily drive it for school related work myself. Quite impressive.
I had the 2007 15" and went through 4 logic boards, all due to the 8600m failing. The upside is back then the service at Apple stores was so good that you could just walk in with a broken computer and walk out with a new one 10 minutes later.
I still use a 17" Early 2008 MacBook Pro CTO on dosdude1's Catalina Patcher every day for writing HTMl. I'm triple booting Catalina, Leopard, and Windows 7. It's honestly a still a beautiful machine, and loads of fun. However, it is a little long in the tooth and the new design language for the Apple Silicon Macs is a compelling upgrade... (posted on a Early 2008 17" MBP)
The worst thing about the first ones was the terrible high pitched whine produced by something in the power regulation. It affected every single one that crossed my work desk, and it drove me batty.
Oh boy. I bought an early 2006 15 inch model produced around the keynote announcement and it was quite the nightmare. The MagSafe connector got so hot that it caught on fire, so that was fun. These things were kind of rushed, leading me to believe that the Intel transition was not really planned at all. One of the funniest design flaws was that all of the early launch units had bent lids that did not shut properly. Even in Apple's promotional photos from the website had a slight bend on the lid.
I have one of those 2006 models, bought for 10 euros half a year ago, been in daily use since that and still works perfectly! Even the GPU still works and I even managed to get Windows 7 fully working with driver support. Seems that I got lucky. I want to also point out that Windows 7 on the Macbook Pro is much more stable for me than MacOS.
How’d you get windows on yours? I’ve been trying for years and still can’t get it to work and I have a late 2006 17” if that helps. And Dang good job keeping it going.
@@Wolfy28 If I do remember correctly, I used a burned Windows 7 disc to install Windows, and then I used drivers which I found under the description of this video: ua-cam.com/video/idvjCiAd6go/v-deo.html Then I found the GPU drivers from a sketchy website I can't find anymore (The reason I downloaded drivers from a sketchy website is, that the normal drivers wont allow to install in Windows and you have to use a patched version of the drivers to make that work). And that's pretty much it. One of the downsides I have discovered is that the Function keys don't work (They don't work as in the keys themselves do work, but you can't change the volume and the brightness etc). Also I want to point out for clarification, that I have a Late 2006, 15 inch Macbook Pro with the ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 graphics card and I'm not dual booting, Windows 7 is the only OS that I have on there. I hope this helps 👍
Bought mine brand new in June 2006. Retired it in 2021 when a flower vase spontaneously exploded and dumped a cup of water between the bezel and LCD, murking up the bottom third of the screen. Still runs though. So yeah, Snow Leopard was its last update. And I regretted ordering the “glossy” screen the instant I unboxed it. But at some point my Logic/Garageband setup got so crazy I dreaded rebuilding it on a new system, so I was like, “Oh well, I’ll use this till it dies…” There’s no describing the abuse and indignity that machine has suffered. Here’s a random example: being left outside in a thunderstorm for HOURS. I brought it in. Turned it sideways so the water would POUR outta the case. Disassembled it completely. Toasted it. Applied the appropriate greases and pastes. Reassembled and pressed the power button… BONG. And this happened TWICE. Even the Superdrive still works. (For comparison, my 2015 MBP got lightly drizzled on ONCE, and was neveragain the same.) What sucks most about the 2006 Macbook Pro? It wont frickin DIE!
I was given a 2006 Core Duo Mac Book Pro and it had the black screen at startup, and no external video, I looked up how to repair the issue as at first I thought it was a bad display inverter, but one video I found stated to bake your Mac in the oven to reflow the GPU, so I did that and got it working again, at least for about six months, my second bake lasted about 4 months. Then I saw a early 2007 Mac Book Pro on Ebay, , but it looked like some one sat on it, the display was cracked, and the frame bent, bidding started at 99 cents, and I won the auction with a 99 cent bid. I was able to repair it by using the screen and inverter from the 2006 Mac Book Pro to get it working, and I still have it. It also came with a good battery.
Having a chat with you about all MacBook models, pros, cons, would be super cool and interesting, and it's a topic I'll never find anyone else to talk with. For most of the people, they're just computers, but for the true Apple Fan, they're an evolution cycle and a crucial piece of history.
Most people don't know that the earlier pre-unibody MacBook Pros are essentially plug and play with the 2008 top case (where the trackpad is attached), I put one on my 2007 and it's great!
YES I had a late 2008 17-inch MacBook Pro and here's what I LOVED about it and miss: the keyboard! That silver keyboard, for me and my typing style, was a perfect-feeling input device. I could type so fast and so accurately on it. Unibody went for that black keyboard that was never as good. Plus, it had the front-loading super drive and firewire... as a beginner (Final Cut Pro 4) video editor, it was all heaven. I couldn't care less about graphics cards, etc. I wish I had it back just for the typic experience. And with (as. you mentioned) Snow Leopard, I never had a glitch. Ahh, those were the days!
I recently received my nephew's old mid 2007 MacBook Pro non unibody and I considered fixing it up since it is beat up and is missing a battery but Iight as well buy a good condition one for cheap. As a fan of old vintage Apple products, I always liked the designs of these 2006-2008 non unibody MacBook Pro as well as the G4 MacBooks.
had the late 2008 model 2.5/2gb/512, my favorite MBP design by far especially in that final iteration....such an industrial look esp the power button as mentioned, speakers were amazing and the newly added LED and multi touch trackpad were welcome features
I lost my mind trying to find a white macbook. I just always wanted one and never got one, so eBay made my dreams into a reality...but there was a catch. See, I found a white Macbook 1,1 for $50 at a thrift store. I was stoked! It was a Core Duo and it booted and had a charger: I was certain that this would let me have that Apple love I'd always heard about. But, as soon as I got it home I found out that all the Mac software I had was too old to run on it. I went to eBay to find the right OS for the computer and, horror, the optical drive didn't work! This slowed me down but I was undeterred. I tried every USB CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drive I owned until I found one that worked. Three days of installing software on the thing just trying to get an OS to work left me with OS 10.5. Then, beyond sadness, I ran into a wall of Apple stupidity where none of the installed software actually worked as intended anymore. Safari can't surf the net, iTunes can't connect to the Apple Store, and the system can't connect to my internet because the security protocols for the router are too new! It was a nightmare. But... I was undeterred. I went on eBay and looked up a newer version of the Macbook, this time a 3,1. I was wrongly led to believe this was the last white macbook. I got it and went through the same process of getting it useable only...surprise...even with OS 10.6 it was still a dud. There was no possibility of it being useful for anything...at all. A rational person would have given up...but I am not that person. I doubled-down on the desire for this white macbook and did more research - finding that the 7,1 was the actual LAST white macbook - a unibody. So, eBay again delivered. I got it to install 10.6, then I was able to go through a truly maddening process of getting it to 10.7 - a process, for all interested, which requires you to set the laptop date and time to a time just after when the installer was created...for EACH installer version you want to use...and extract from that installation the installation media which, if you don't, will fail to install! I crept slowly from 10.7 to 10.8, each installation taking about 2 hours. 10.10, 10.11... I bravely tried to jump from 10.11 to 10.13 which was my original destination and, three days later, success! The unibody was upgraded to an OS that was still new enough to allow me to use the App store, Safari, Chrome and even iTunes! It was bliss! Then I decided to upgrade the RAM and HD (to SSD) and replace the battery. I even found some colorful plastic covers for it so that I could have it in pink!
I paid $2700 for the 17” MBP in November 2007 and it died by winter 2011. The battery swelled, the power brick broke, and then finally the display cable connection to the logic board broke. It was a great computer until it suddenly wasn’t and then it was utter trash.
I grabbed a 2008 MBP in near perfect condition, replaced the HD with a SSD, maxed out the memory, and installed High Sierra, and later Mojave, and for the most part, it's a very decent laptop for basic tasks, including watching video. I also had fun pushing the laptop to the limit by installing Big Sur via OCLP and although it was barely useable, it did work (which is quite remarkable for such an old machine).
I had an early 2008 15” for 6 years. It had 2 logic board replacements and 2 screen replacements under AppleCare and the only original part is the keyboard and case bottom. It ended up really slow and when the hard drive went I replaced it with a 13” Retina in 2014, which was a solid and unproblematic machine that my Dad is still using (though that’s also had 2 screen replacements due to delamination and a battery replacement
I had a 2008 17” and it was great at the time. Sold it and got scammed, water under the bridge. Got a newer unibody 17” 2010 and it’s been my favorite laptop. Going to keep it forever even if it dies.
My first-gen 17" MBP was crap. The battery was already swelling when I took it out of the box and the hard drive crashed in the first week I had it. The GPU ended up killing the machine. Oh and back in those days a ton a software wasn't updated to run on Intel and ran in Rosetta which was very slow. Also the 6 bit dispay had terrible colour accuracy.
I'll go further, the only unibody models worth buying are the 2012s, because they support Metal. macOS is becoming more dependant on Metal with every new release, and running Big Sur and later without it is very frustrating (lots of bugs, incompatibility with applications like Maps and iMovie, etc).
But seriously, if you can afford a new mac, just do that instead. The design on the brand new ones is much cooler than the original unibody design and the first party accessories mach the design language of the computer. I love the old stuff but it's hard to ignore the fact that Apple does really seem to care about referencing that old design language in their new products.
My only laptop is still a 2007 MacBook Pro (2.2GHz with only 128MB of VRAM) with the fixed recalled graphics card. It originally died and Apple fixed it with the new version of the board that solved all those issues and has been working hard ever since. Obvious upgrades done were larger HD's and then an SSD, 6GB RAM etc. As long as you watch videos in 720p, no stuttering issues. I can do everything needed for a basic (excluding major video editing in HD/4K) productivity day, including Affinity apps (latest v1 of course), iWork, and even Zoom or FaceTime calls using 10.11 El Capitan! So I am one of those people. Longest running work computer ever! I don't know anyone using a PC of the same area for all these modern tasks. My main machine is my 2010 Mac Pro - another great purchase - (can't edit 4K footage etc. on the MBP in a reasonable amount of time) but everyone else in the family is using that 2007 laptop for everything. Uses are endless. A newer laptop failed with the combined audio port, so the only laptop in the house that can even do a proper audio setup is now that same 2007 MBP. It has all the ports, including audio in and out, to do anything you need. Back in the 1990 / 2000''s, that was unthinkable. By the time 8 years went by it was virtually impossible to use for anything remotely modern of the day. Technology changed so fast back then (Mac updates every 6 months or so in the early 2000's), that you were extremely limited compared to the life of a Mac in the last 16 years. It also looks great because I purchased a plastic wrap for it and installed it ASAP (the latest tech back then). Then replaced the wrap with a new one in 2010 or so. It still has it on it even though it has yellowed a bit. Considering the price I paid refurbished from Apple, it was worth every penny. I plan on keeping it going well into the future. I've been though all the transitions since the 68K Mac LC 575, so this is amazing to me, how long it has lasted.
No, I agree. I also like the looks of those. The feeling of the trackpad however not so much. The plastic on mine is fatiguing to use. Also my GPU failed so I will bake it in the oven for 9mins to hopefully resolder it and get it working again. I could handsolder it but that would take too much time for such an old device.
Oh, hope you can get it fixed! I have the older PowerPC G4 version, basically the same machine but a lot less usable as far as processing power and compatibility goes. Trackpad is indeed a bit of a pain to use, though a usb mouse can make up for that.
First of all, NVIDIA made a new revision of the GPU in 2010 that doesn't fail. Somewhat unreliable chips combined with Apple's terrible cooling can only lead to a failure! Second of all, it will run 1080P UA-cam videos in macOS if you know how to have it do so. And yes, the design is lovely! I would really like to get one to perfect working condition. I have a 17" with a perfectly good motherboard with the revised reliable GPU, but the keyboard is dead, and so is the battery... I might restore it as a project, even though I'd like to restore a 15", I have a ton of parts for them except batteries but also I do not have a revised motherboard, so... I'll have to see what I end up doing.
I used an Early 2008 MacBook Pro until about 2012. I saw the writing was on the wall for non-retina devices and got the last upgradable MacBook Pro. At the time I was doing IT for schools, got a good edu discount.
I had a 2008 for a long time and I absolutely loved it. Hands down best keyboard of any mac. I just got a 16" M2 Pro unit and this machine really is giving me 2008 MBP vibes, which is a great thing.
I remember having nothing but screen issues with these when they came out. I went from a 12" PowerBook to the early Intel 15" MacBook Pro. Three screens in a row had very uneven backlighting and then two with flickering. After that, I gave up and switched to a Thinkpad. Oh man, that was the glory days of the Thinkpad design. Apple has improved so much since 2006 and Thinkpads have been on a downhill slide. Fun to take a look back on this era.
I just bought a 2016 MacBook Pro 13 inch non-retina unibody. I upgraded the hard drive to an SSD replaced the battery, upgraded the memory to 16gb of RAM and installed Linux Mint. It now has many more years as a functional laptop.
oh man, I remember those days, I didn't want to get intel inside so I kept my G4 tower maxed up. I bought one in 2007 to get a laptop but didn't like Lion that Apple thought or wished to replace a computer by having the same os on the phone and desktop but they failed. Then I bought an iMac I still use today..
I love my early 2008 MacBook Pro: I named it "Steve Martin", as a reference to the 1983 sci-fi comedy The Man With Two Brains, because it has two SSDs (one 500 GB 850 EVO in the SATA hard-drive bay and one 480 GB Intel 535 in the ATA optical drive bay). In the hard-drive bay SSD, Steve Martin runs Snow Leopard on one partition and El Capitan on the other. Like you, I love the design of the original MacBook Pros: the case is similar to the PowerBook G4 but much easier to work on, the backlit keyboard looks cool and the screen is bright and detailed even today. Unfortunately, installing a second SSD in the optical drive bay was a bit of a wash. Like the 2006-2008 Mac Pros, the first-generation MacBook Pros use an IDE/ATA bus for their optical drives, and a laptop IDE optical drive bus runs significantly slower than a SATA or even IDE hard-drive bus in the same laptop. I tried running a few operating systems on the SSD in the IDE optical drive bay, with poor results: Snow Leopard booted fast and ran fine, but Windows 7 and Ubuntu 20 booted terribly slowly and ran terribly (I assume Snow Leopard was designed to run on IDE, as the original 2008 MacBook Air has a tiny 1.8-inch IDE iPod hard-drive, but Windows 7 and Ubuntu 20 are not designed to run on IDE). As such, I use this slow-running second SSD just for storage.
You mentioned that the battery wasn‘t working on the pre-unibody MBP. These machines throttle down significantly with no working battery present. With a working battery installed, the performance of both machines should be very similar.
My first laptop / computer was a 2006 macbook pro! I bought it off craigslist around 2009/2010 for $500. It got me through the last few years of high school and early college despite having one of the Core Duo chips. Holy crap those 2 cores got HOT. I bought a new battery for it directly from the Apple Store (take that M2 MacBooks!) and later on the GPU ended up failing, so I replaced it with a Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro. Years later I found a used lower case complete with motherboard and fans for like $30. I swapped over my matte screen, keyboard and HDD just for nostalgia. Today it's hanging out on a bookshelf without a battery, which expanded. The OG MagSafe 85w charger worked great with my 2013 machine (with the adapter) for years, that charging brick just recently died also.
I had a pre-Unibody... suffered 2 motherboard failures. I replaced the second failed one with a faster 2.6GHz board. I actually chose this over the Unibody back in late 2008 because I preferred the matte finish display and the overall silver look and I saved like $250. The backlit keyboard was beautiful. Currently typing this on a failed GPU 2011 MBP, but this thing just keeps holding on. Idk about real-world performance over PPC though. Before my 2008 MBP, I had a dual 1.25 G4 MDD and that thing smoked it in my usage.
The only small caveat I would add is that you can have DosDude install a revised Gt8600 GPU that is reliable...if you want to pay for the job. So you CAN have a reliable 2008, it’s just not cost effective to achieve it.
Once again, my favorite Fruit Fly (Apple Fanboi) keeps it real. Interesting video from a historical perspective. This is so refreshing as almost every Fruit Fly channel is mouth-breathing and breathlessly contriving what will appear (and then not) at the next Fruit Circus. As someone who owns two mid-2012 unibody Macbook Pros, I still marvel at how amazing those machines were. Quality everywhere. Upgradeable. Easy to work on. Everything that the Fruit company no longer possesses.
I got one back in 2015 for my 10th birthday almost exactly 8 years ago. It worked good, and I think it was on snow leopard. One day it showed the 🚫 symbol on the home screen and I had to wait untill my uncle (he gave it to me) to help fix it. Turns out it had problems when he was able to get it to boot ( I don’t remember what was wrong with it), and he ended up recycling it. I got another one a couple years ago with the original box and it was good, it even came fully upgraded for a cheap price. It was ironic because soon after I got it, I saw another one for sale at a swap meet. I used it for a month or 2 because the bezel was already cracked and the screen basically broke.
in 2014 I got my first Mac, a 2007 15" MacBook Pro. I used that thing for 3 years, editing 4k video in Final Cut, making music in logic, school work, etc. show me another computer from 2007 that could be used to edit 4k video a decade later
Windows can’t save one of these either. The GPU doesn’t have proper driver support under windows 10. I don’t really mind though, these make great laptops for early OS X
To their credit, in the case of the Early-2008 and 2011 models, the GPU issues were in no way Apple's fault... The chipsets themselves were defective. In the case of the 8600M GT, luckily, by the end of 2008, nVidia released a revised version of the chipset, which completely solved the issue, and are 100% reliable (the revised materials were also used on the 9600M and MCP79 chipsets used in Unibody models). AMD, on the other hand, made no such effort, and as such we are stuck with defective Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series trash. In the case of the 2010 15" models though, that WAS entirely Apple's fault, as they failed to spec an appropriate capacitor for filtering of the GPU framebuffer power rail. They can be fully repaired by bodging on a better capacitor.
Been dailying a mid '12 unibody since release. Besides some upgrades, it's needed some repairs. The original hard drive went bad, replaced the track pad, it's on its 3rd battery and just today replaced the WiFi antenna. I do some 3d modelling, mainly Fusion 360. Takes a few minutes to start, and runs ~ok. More than anything I'm just curious how long it will last. Been debating whether to do a workaround to get newer OS versions. Since Luke is a Unibody evangelist, I would love to see what solutions he'd try.
I find it crazy that it can’t run a video in 1080p on UA-cam because 10 years ago it would have been able to just fine. I remember in its day these machines were very powerful and people used to run boot camp and could play crysis on them, yet today they struggle to play a YT video!? I don’t know what’s changed?
In the middle of last year I bought a 2006 MBP with the glossy screen and a 2.16 Duo. I bought two mini-PC cards for it: an SD card reader, and an E-Sata card. I took out the drive (which also had XP on it) and put in a 1TB drive (and added Vista on it). I also bought a new battery. It boots a lot quicker than my 2012 MBP, but then again that has 8x the RAM.
I've got a 15" 2008 MacBook Pro running El Capitan. Bought it refurbished from Apple in late 2009 and still "use" it today. I use it to tether my camera for photography and also need it for scanning on my ooooold Microtek Flatbed Scanner, using FireWire and running VueScan software. I know I'm behind the times but for these functions it still works. When it finally dies I'll get a new Mac Laptop. Love your content, been watching for a long time.
I have a 2008 MacBook Pro running El Capitan and it's still perfectly usable today. In fact I used it until a few months ago to edit and upload almost all of my videos (upgrading it with 6 GB of RAM and an SSD helped with that) and now my dad uses it to do Zoom with his cousin in Australia, and it still works fine for that too. I now use a 2008 iMac which is equally obsolete but is equally obsolete but has a slightly faster CPU and a much larger full HD display. It's also still running El Capitan.
I remember when these came out, I was working in IT at the time, the first Macbook 15" had 15+ recalls to it and when the corp I worked for at the time had ordered a batch of 100, nearly half were DOA. We were so happy when the unibody macs came out, those old ones really couldn't take abuse/drop damage and honestly they died left and right from hardware failures. The Powerbook G4's that came before it had the same durability problems but at least they were reliable, my 12" Powerbook G4 lasted 11 years before i finally put it out to pasture(covered in stickers and dents), didn't see a single first/second year macbook pro make it longer then 6 in a work environment.
Also, the unibody models make great homemade routers, probably better than anything you can buy new today. Highly recommend. I put my 2012 to work with that, with the display disconnected (the OS doesn't support screen control). And it has a battery backup, if you run your modem and wifi APs on a UPS, you are golden.
Don't forget that the earliest models are a "Core Duo" NOT a "Core 2 Duo" so that meant (official) MacOS support ended MUCH sooner due to the lack of 64Bit support on the "Core Duo" models. A huge shame!
I recently acquired a mid 2007 15 inch (for $20!!!) and i do enjoy using it and I really love the look! I’m still running mountain lion on it with a lighter version of Firefox and UA-cam playback is smooth! It does get quite hot and I do live in fear of GPU failure but ill enjoy it while it lasts 🙏. (It came with 4gb of ram and an OEM lightly used battery. I installed a 240GB SSD and applied new thermal paste.)
Still have my 2007 15" Santa Rosa MacBook Pro (obviously not my primary laptop anymore). It still boots up! I used it continuously up to 2015, surprisingly enough. After getting a 2015 13" MacBook, I reloaded the Leopard OS so that it'll retain its old school retro vibe. I plan to get an after market battery for it (they're still out there) so that it'll regain it's 2.5 hours of unplugged glory.
The first generation design is nicer and the keyboard is absolute pleasure to type on. I used the 2006 MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo until end of 2014. It was a slow machine and was gradually getting slower the longer I used it. One day I spilled tea right on the keyboard, after which a couple of keys stopped working. But I was a poor student so I still kept using it for couple more years, until I saved enough money for another flawed machine, the late 2011 Unibody. Despite all the negatives, I still have fond memories of the 2006 MBP. It served me well in college, I wrote my diploma thesis and tons of homework on it. And I loved using Snow Leopard so much that I was disappointed that I could not use it anymore on the 2011 machine. Little did I know that it actually was possible. I only found out two years ago :) Thanks for the video, it brought back memories.
I've got a old (donated) unibody and I use it as a DJing machine, doesn't need to be hugely powerful, and the only thing needed as far as parts was a new battery (the original battery had become a collection spicy pillows due to overcharging and had buckled the case bottom). Was also recently given one to fix, and that had just an issue where the SATA cable was shorting out on the case, causing intermittent disk problems. One piece of insulating tape later, and a fresh install and she was good to go back to her owner.
My cousin bought the original from early 2006 with features that ran her $2700. It essentially became a brick to her in 2012 after only 6 years of use as 10.6 Snow Leopard became obsolete. She handed it down to me in 2018 and despite the 1GB RAM I was able to make the thing surprisingly usable with Lubuntu 18.04LTS. Now unsupported again as of 2021, I'm looking for another 32-bit Linux distro, but I might finally put it to bed and focus on seeing if I can put opencore Ventura on my aunt's 2008 unibody Macbook (5,1) that's currently on Mojave
I still use an early 2008 pro for my iTunes library. I got it for free, and luckily the previous owner had gotten the logic board replaced through apple so it had the revised graphics chip that wouldn’t fail. It works pretty ok on MacOS Mojave and Windows 7.
I got the 2008 Macbook Pro as a birthday gift back in the day and use to hook it up to my Dad's cinema display when I got the chance. I got big into World of Warcraft, it was the times, and it handled it very well. Some of my fondest memory's are with this laptop playing WOW with friends in the woods by that old house, I was the warmest on the colder nights. This machine holds a special nostalgic place in my heart. That machine served me nearly 4 years. The GPU was a party killer the entire time I had it. The screen would go black mid-game on occasion, after the years went by it was every time I booted up a game. This was the machine that ended my Apple love affair and was replaced by a PC laptop with an APU. My dads friend used it for years till that GPU gave out. It sat on his entertainment center and was used for movies and playing cd's. I wanted to get another at some point just cuz, but there was always another nostalgic mac with less issues to choose from (Lampshade iMac G4).
I had such MacBook Pro with a Core2Duo CPU back in the day. Back in the day, I was using a 12" PowerBook G4 which was a outstanding device. It was a small device and MacOS X 10.4 was super stable. 10.5 was in my opinion the worst release ever, as it had in the beginning a lot of bug - especially with waking up during standby. Back to the MacBook Pro: Except for the slighly wobbly keyboard, the device was in general not that bad for its time. Powerful, good battery life. But, then the problems started: Every 3-6 months, I had to bring my MacBook Pro to repair: Logic board, Superdrirve, logic board, again logic board, Superdrive and again logic board. Things have changed a lot since then and nobody remembers the quality issues Apple had back then.
I have a MBP '07 15 inch on Mavericks and it was running great, til the GPU said 'nah'. It's a shame because I do love the design and think it's a good design, but its time was up. I might fix it someday, but I still have my MBP 09 17 Inch dual booted on Snow Leopard/Yosemite and it's a great device for media consumption. Netflix runs great on it, and it doesn't get too hot compared to what the 07 MBP did (I also have two '06 originals, one of needs a harddrive replacement, and the other is being harvested for parts).
Not really having a collection, but I did buy a Macbook 4,1 black just for the sake of owning one finally some years ago. Loaded a small and cheap SSD to it and it really performs quite well with Snow Leopard. But as soon as you try to do something meaningful regarding modern web browsing it just shows its age. Same conclusion as with your pre unibody Macbook Pro I guess.
I bought a 17" Macbook Pro used. Had the graphics problem and Apple replaced the logic board for free. Other than the fact it got hot enough to cook on, it was a great machine. It had the high res display. I travelled with it and had a couple spare original batteries for flights and stuff. And as a photographer it was great for editing and backing up via FireWire to my LaCie rugged drive. Only real issue was the screen bezel/support cracking. I swaped it out twice. I extended the life with an SSD until it just coudln't cut it. Bought a mid-2015 MBP which is still my computer now.
They were easy to break just by hands, they were instantly scratched, gpus were burning, always overheated, logic boards died easily, they were slow, but... They were beautiful. Especially the 17".
Just had to pull out my Macbook Pro 1,1 and leave a comment on this video XD I have it running 10.6.8 with 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 ram. This thing has no right to be on the modern web, yet here it is… Barely XD
I use the early 2008 with dual boot windows vista + osx mountain lion. I have all my jailbreak + ipsw tools which no longer works on newer versions of mac os and windows. Redsn0w green p0ison ziphone. I love the 2008 macbook pro
I’m currently using the 17inch 2007 MacBook Pro, now I don’t use it that often as I have a m1 iMac that I use the most, but when I need a laptop it gets the job done, It’s currently running a patched version of Mojave, I found that it runs a lot better on Mojave then Catalina and I don’t find myself lacking many features, these MacBooks may not be the best ones apples ever made, but they will always hold a special place in my heart, especially the 17 inch
The best way to make an old MacBook not obsolete is by maxing out the RAM, adding an SSD and installing Windows 10, if you can find the drivers. Windows 7 will probably still work fine, though.
I had two of these back in the day. Both died. One from GPU failure, the other one kinda just... stopped booting? If you try to boot it, it'll just max out the fans and nothing will come up on the screen. It's really sad, because these machines are just gorgeous, I absolutely adore their design, but ahh man, the GPUs just suck.
My first Mac, a 17” with all the fruit. Replaced logic board 3 times for graphics issues, and the thing would get hotter than the sun. Still was a great workhorse for my fledgling video production business. Worst aspect for me was the sharp lower edge below the trackpad would dig into my wrists.
I had the early 2008 Macbook Pro, but I sold it after just at few months to buy the original Macbook Air. The performance was definitely a downgrade, but I loved my Air. In 2010, I bought the new Macbook Air and had it until the 3rd revision 12" Macbook was released. Now, I have a Mac Studio as my main computer but still keep the 12" Macbook for when I'm travelling.
I ordered one of the first of these off the line. I remember when a text message with a shipping notification came in on my Nokia phone that winter. Mine was built to order with the 7200 rpm drive. Good times! ;-)
family members of mine work in the television and film industry - they always had apple products and every model from the blueberry g3 to current iMac and Macbook models.. as a teenager i was always so excited to go to their house to witness all this tech when it was new. Those titanium macbook pro were like the coolest thing.. i was amazed by the keyboard backlighting and just the whole aesthetic. Dont get me started on the sunflower imac 😍 to this day they inspired me to use apple products and im happy as can be! My first computer was a hand me down G3 iMac, after that i got a used ibook g3 in highschool, for college i got a brand new Mid 2010 15'' Macbook Pro which i retired in 2020! replaced with a 13 inch m1 macbook pro as im currently back in school and hoping to get another 10 years out of this laptop! I will always have a love for apple computers! Phones.. eh theyre... fine! my iphone 12 gets the job done.
I had the first generation Macbook Pro, having graduated from a 12-inch PowerBook G4. It was ahead of its time back then; obviously, today, it's not going to hold its own against the Macbook Pros with M1/M2 chips.
I remember going on a high school trip in the spring of 2006. One kid had a brand new 15in Intel MacBook Pro and was using Bootcamp to play Elder Scrolls. Suffice it to say that he was the coolest kid there.
I have an early 2009 Macbook Pro but because I was using the Ipad so much I forgot the password and I have tried every thing on line to get it to let me access it and can't. Oddly it will let me on as a guest. But how to get it to work again so I can use it to show my videos while I am doing them live on OBS on my Silicon M1 Mac Min & Logitech camera eludes me. By the way I can still do videos on my Iphone 7 with no problem and have recently.
Honestly, I'm replying from my Early 08 MacBook Pro. I have a 2012 i7 MacBook I never use, I just prefer the look and the feel of my 2008. I have it decked out with an SSD, max ram, the works. I run an app to keep the fans working on high speed so I can keep the GPU cool. I ended up with it nearly new old stock, and it's worked perfect for a few years for me now, The battery even still works. Like you said in your video, these have a very pleasing to look at, and use design language. Going SSD with these increases their usability by a pretty large margin. I daily drive my 2008. Sometimes it's the only computer I'll use for weeks at a time. If you don't mind a not perfect Mac OS experience then these are actually quite delightful laptops to still use. I bounce between 720p, and 1080p depending on how hot the GPU is getting, it does both just fine. The SSD got rid of the lag like you showed in your video.
I was using a Mid 2009 13" Macbook Pro 8GB Ram and an SSD running Catalina with dosdude1's patch right up until January, when i bought an M2 Macbook Air. It does get the job done for basic task's. Has a few bugs though. The computer doesn't sleep when you close the cover. Apple Maps doesn't display properly. And some apps don't start properly(crash) the first time you try to start them. Other than that, its quite usable.
I bought a 2006 Macbook Pro for $15. I got it working just fine with more ram, albeit DDR2, and an SSD. I installed a copy of Snow Leopard and it was working but overheating to the point it was melting some rubber band it has in the back, but after some cleaning it was no longer an issue. It has no battery so performance was slower than normal but I managed to use it for recording music and teaching English classes since the course books were compatible hah I don't use it anymore since I haven't got the time to play with it but I'm not going to sell it.
The early 2008 MBP is my first Mac. It had a lot of problems. The fan was replaced, the battery got replaced by Apple twice (then by myself another two times), the display was replaced due to faulty ribbon cable, then the GeForce 8600MGT along with the logic board was replaced. But I love the design. I still turn it on from time to time to just appreciate how beautiful it is. On the other hand, I hate the unibody "panda" MBPs so much that I don't own any of them until in 2016 Apple came with the thinner design and space gray color.
Not a word on the gorgeous keyboard on the original MBP ... I'd have that on a modern MBP any day. I had the 2007 15" ... lasted 7 years running Logic Pro in a music setup. Lunched one logic board and two batteries, but no graphics issues.
I’m SUPER excited to announce that the day after WWDC on June 6 I’ll be hosting a special live podcast and even with Noah Rubin, Sam Kohl and Jon Prosser to talk Apple announcements, do some giveaways and games, and more! Brought to you by CleanMyMac X, Genius Bar Goes Drk tickets are on sale now!! Head to geniusbargoesdrk.com!!!
Hi Luke, loved the vid! What do you use to edit your videos? Just wondering as I am trying to start a YT channel
I gotta thank you soo much Luke,
I recently purchased a "flashy folder" 2013 21.5" iMac with a slightly chipped screen on the bezel for $50!
Turns out it has the MTO optional i7 4770 cpu and GTX 750M gpu!! I got it local from the original owner because it's stock PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD apparently failed when they went to wipe it before sale!
Woot Woot!
Sooo....
I had to completely gutt it, replace the NVMe SSD, max out the 8gb of ram to 16gb, and also added a 500gb SATA SSD for extra storage.
It's currently running Catalina super duper snappy! I am very pleased with the project to say the least.
All for just an overall $90 total investment, and while I intentionally wanted to eventually sell it?
I'm really hard pressed to just go ahead and keep it strictly for audio production (I'm also a musician).
Anyway, I wouldn't of even attempted something like this if not for your superb and inspiring content, and well also OWC's tutorial vids. Ha!
Thank you Luke!
P.S.
If you are ever wanting to dive deeper into vintage Mac content?
I have an original (RevB) Bondi Blue iMac, a G4 tower w/ (gynormous) beige box apple external storage, a G5 tower w/ 20" cinema display (the display stays here tho ha!), and a late 2008 iMac w/ 6gb ram that I was about to a SSD upgrade on for my son : )
Literally all living within my hallway closet! Bwahahah!
Cheers from North Carolina!
☺
Surprised you didn't mention that the very first MacBooks had 32-bit Core Duo CPUs, which is probably the most crippling issue, even if you want to install Linux on them.
Some facts
Core Duo. That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
I was surprised he didn't mention that, either. I found one in an e-waste bin and thought it would be a fun project to put Linux on it, but I had forgotten (or probably just never realized) that these original MacBook Pros were 32-bit.
Currently playing around with one, it's a pity really because it looks brand new... but yes, 32bit only and 2GB RAM max, plus the horrible ATI x1600 that even Windows refuses to work with. With a lot of trying and failing various OSes I managed to get Windows 8 with Bootcamp drivers onto it as the most bearable system, with a SSD it even feels kinda nice as long as you just do very mundane things. But UA-cam is already too much for that poor GPU and the crippling RAM. Serves basically as an iTunes radio now for listening to podcasts and audiobooks... there's still a fairly recent and usable iTunes version for windows 8 32bit, definitely better than the vintage version you get for the max supported macOS.
Or the fact that the 2007 ones were equally useless as they are hardware limited to El Capitan because the T7xxx CPUs do not support instruction sets in later versions, thus locked to 10.11 while 2008s are able to happily go to Ventura, albeit slow as fuck
As a collector, I would say the Titanium PowerBook G4 is a way more attractive device
I agree, it’s very unique
@@lukemiani Yes I buy in Ebay in 2022
@@lukemiani I also upload content but on another topic
0fcourse
Yes Design is so great. But it's so freaking slow. You cannot do anything with that. I tried it.
I will say one thing, unlike the 2011 MacBook Pros, the 2007 and early 2008 models got a proper recall for the GPU issues they experienced. If you can find a recalled 07/08 Pro, their GPUs are replaced with a revised model, and the issues of graphical artifacts or no boot are completely fixed. The only way I’ve found to tell the difference is if they have a green sticker in the RAM bay, or if the GPU die has a 603 or 604 model number, vs. 600, 601, or 602.
That's all down to nVidia - nVidia had a problem, they fixed it, done. Apple replaced boards free of charge for four years I think, maybe longer if you pushed them. AMD NEVER released a fixed version of their crappy 2011 era chips. So Apple board swapped with replacements which would eventually fail. Poop.
Honestly it blows my mind sometimes to thing that the original iPhone was concurrent with Mac OS X Tiger and the Pre-unibody MacBooks. The iPhone lives in the 3GS Snow Leopard era in my mind and its hard to believe that some people were setting up iPhones on those MacBooks running Tiger
I remember setting up my 3GS on a white, plastic MacBook with the Intel Core Duo processor. It didn't even have the core 2 duo, it was the original core duo model. It's amazing to think that when that computer was brand new, it was the fastest computer my high school self had ever used.
As someone who also remembers that time, it wasn’t that out of the ordinary here in NZ; mostly because when iPhones started to become prevalent, a lot of people were still rocking the first-gen 15" MBPs.
My mom STILL uses her 2010 15 inch MBP she bought new as her main laptop. She uses it at least 2-3 times a week with a light workflow. I swapped the 320 gig HD with a 256 gig SSD and upgraded to 8 GB of memory back in 2016. It has 86% battery health and about 350 cycles on the ORIGINAL battery. That thing is a solid performer. I could honestly daily drive it for school related work myself. Quite impressive.
I had the 2007 15" and went through 4 logic boards, all due to the 8600m failing. The upside is back then the service at Apple stores was so good that you could just walk in with a broken computer and walk out with a new one 10 minutes later.
I still use a 17" Early 2008 MacBook Pro CTO on dosdude1's Catalina Patcher every day for writing HTMl. I'm triple booting Catalina, Leopard, and Windows 7. It's honestly a still a beautiful machine, and loads of fun. However, it is a little long in the tooth and the new design language for the Apple Silicon Macs is a compelling upgrade...
(posted on a Early 2008 17" MBP)
Time to upgrade that garbage
apple needs to make an 18" M3
these machines are awesome !
yo 17 inch? If only the specs weren't so ancient
@@emilsecker7881Bro shut up if it works it's good
The worst thing about the first ones was the terrible high pitched whine produced by something in the power regulation. It affected every single one that crossed my work desk, and it drove me batty.
Oh boy. I bought an early 2006 15 inch model produced around the keynote announcement and it was quite the nightmare. The MagSafe connector got so hot that it caught on fire, so that was fun. These things were kind of rushed, leading me to believe that the Intel transition was not really planned at all. One of the funniest design flaws was that all of the early launch units had bent lids that did not shut properly. Even in Apple's promotional photos from the website had a slight bend on the lid.
I have that too and still up and running but you have to ventilated it with an electric fan because it's so very hot.
I have one of those 2006 models, bought for 10 euros half a year ago, been in daily use since that and still works perfectly! Even the GPU still works and I even managed to get Windows 7 fully working with driver support. Seems that I got lucky. I want to also point out that Windows 7 on the Macbook Pro is much more stable for me than MacOS.
How’d you get windows on yours? I’ve been trying for years and still can’t get it to work and I have a late 2006 17” if that helps. And Dang good job keeping it going.
@@Wolfy28 If I do remember correctly, I used a burned Windows 7 disc to install Windows, and then I used drivers which I found under the description of this video: ua-cam.com/video/idvjCiAd6go/v-deo.html
Then I found the GPU drivers from a sketchy website I can't find anymore (The reason I downloaded drivers from a sketchy website is, that the normal drivers wont allow to install in Windows and you have to use a patched version of the drivers to make that work). And that's pretty much it.
One of the downsides I have discovered is that the Function keys don't work (They don't work as in the keys themselves do work, but you can't change the volume and the brightness etc).
Also I want to point out for clarification, that I have a Late 2006, 15 inch Macbook Pro with the ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 graphics card and I'm not dual booting, Windows 7 is the only OS that I have on there.
I hope this helps 👍
@@Whitecat372 I'll try to get it to work and thanks for letting me know. I'll try to remember to send you my results. Thanks again.
I hope your replaced the thermal compound
@@kirishima638 if your talking to me I haven't yet but I've cleaned the cooling system and removed as much dust as possible.
Bought mine brand new in June 2006. Retired it in 2021 when a flower vase spontaneously exploded and dumped a cup of water between the bezel and LCD, murking up the bottom third of the screen. Still runs though.
So yeah, Snow Leopard was its last update. And I regretted ordering the “glossy” screen the instant I unboxed it. But at some point my Logic/Garageband setup got so crazy I dreaded rebuilding it on a new system, so I was like, “Oh well, I’ll use this till it dies…”
There’s no describing the abuse and indignity that machine has suffered. Here’s a random example: being left outside in a thunderstorm for HOURS.
I brought it in.
Turned it sideways so the water would POUR outta the case.
Disassembled it completely. Toasted it. Applied the appropriate greases and pastes. Reassembled and pressed the power button…
BONG.
And this happened TWICE.
Even the Superdrive still works.
(For comparison, my 2015 MBP got lightly drizzled on ONCE, and was neveragain the same.)
What sucks most about the 2006 Macbook Pro?
It wont frickin DIE!
I was given a 2006 Core Duo Mac Book Pro and it had the black screen at startup, and no external video, I looked up how to repair the issue as at first I thought it was a bad display inverter, but one video I found stated to bake your Mac in the oven to reflow the GPU, so I did that and got it working again, at least for about six months, my second bake lasted about 4 months. Then I saw a early 2007 Mac Book Pro on Ebay, , but it looked like some one sat on it, the display was cracked, and the frame bent, bidding started at 99 cents, and I won the auction with a 99 cent bid. I was able to repair it by using the screen and inverter from the 2006 Mac Book Pro to get it working, and I still have it. It also came with a good battery.
Having a chat with you about all MacBook models, pros, cons, would be super cool and interesting, and it's a topic I'll never find anyone else to talk with. For most of the people, they're just computers, but for the true Apple Fan, they're an evolution cycle and a crucial piece of history.
Most people don't know that the earlier pre-unibody MacBook Pros are essentially plug and play with the 2008 top case (where the trackpad is attached), I put one on my 2007 and it's great!
YES I had a late 2008 17-inch MacBook Pro and here's what I LOVED about it and miss: the keyboard! That silver keyboard, for me and my typing style, was a perfect-feeling input device. I could type so fast and so accurately on it. Unibody went for that black keyboard that was never as good. Plus, it had the front-loading super drive and firewire... as a beginner (Final Cut Pro 4) video editor, it was all heaven. I couldn't care less about graphics cards, etc. I wish I had it back just for the typic experience. And with (as. you mentioned) Snow Leopard, I never had a glitch. Ahh, those were the days!
I recently received my nephew's old mid 2007 MacBook Pro non unibody and I considered fixing it up since it is beat up and is missing a battery but Iight as well buy a good condition one for cheap. As a fan of old vintage Apple products, I always liked the designs of these 2006-2008 non unibody MacBook Pro as well as the G4 MacBooks.
had the late 2008 model 2.5/2gb/512, my favorite MBP design by far especially in that final iteration....such an industrial look esp the power button as mentioned, speakers were amazing and the newly added LED and multi touch trackpad were welcome features
I lost my mind trying to find a white macbook. I just always wanted one and never got one, so eBay made my dreams into a reality...but there was a catch. See, I found a white Macbook 1,1 for $50 at a thrift store. I was stoked! It was a Core Duo and it booted and had a charger: I was certain that this would let me have that Apple love I'd always heard about. But, as soon as I got it home I found out that all the Mac software I had was too old to run on it. I went to eBay to find the right OS for the computer and, horror, the optical drive didn't work! This slowed me down but I was undeterred. I tried every USB CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drive I owned until I found one that worked. Three days of installing software on the thing just trying to get an OS to work left me with OS 10.5. Then, beyond sadness, I ran into a wall of Apple stupidity where none of the installed software actually worked as intended anymore. Safari can't surf the net, iTunes can't connect to the Apple Store, and the system can't connect to my internet because the security protocols for the router are too new! It was a nightmare. But... I was undeterred. I went on eBay and looked up a newer version of the Macbook, this time a 3,1. I was wrongly led to believe this was the last white macbook. I got it and went through the same process of getting it useable only...surprise...even with OS 10.6 it was still a dud. There was no possibility of it being useful for anything...at all. A rational person would have given up...but I am not that person. I doubled-down on the desire for this white macbook and did more research - finding that the 7,1 was the actual LAST white macbook - a unibody. So, eBay again delivered. I got it to install 10.6, then I was able to go through a truly maddening process of getting it to 10.7 - a process, for all interested, which requires you to set the laptop date and time to a time just after when the installer was created...for EACH installer version you want to use...and extract from that installation the installation media which, if you don't, will fail to install! I crept slowly from 10.7 to 10.8, each installation taking about 2 hours. 10.10, 10.11... I bravely tried to jump from 10.11 to 10.13 which was my original destination and, three days later, success! The unibody was upgraded to an OS that was still new enough to allow me to use the App store, Safari, Chrome and even iTunes! It was bliss! Then I decided to upgrade the RAM and HD (to SSD) and replace the battery. I even found some colorful plastic covers for it so that I could have it in pink!
I paid $2700 for the 17” MBP in November 2007 and it died by winter 2011. The battery swelled, the power brick broke, and then finally the display cable connection to the logic board broke. It was a great computer until it suddenly wasn’t and then it was utter trash.
I grabbed a 2008 MBP in near perfect condition, replaced the HD with a SSD, maxed out the memory, and installed High Sierra, and later Mojave, and for the most part, it's a very decent laptop for basic tasks, including watching video. I also had fun pushing the laptop to the limit by installing Big Sur via OCLP and although it was barely useable, it did work (which is quite remarkable for such an old machine).
@@NRGYit uses sata not ide
I had an early 2008 15” for 6 years. It had 2 logic board replacements and 2 screen replacements under AppleCare and the only original part is the keyboard and case bottom. It ended up really slow and when the hard drive went I replaced it with a 13” Retina in 2014, which was a solid and unproblematic machine that my Dad is still using (though that’s also had 2 screen replacements due to delamination and a battery replacement
I had a 2008 17” and it was great at the time. Sold it and got scammed, water under the bridge. Got a newer unibody 17” 2010 and it’s been my favorite laptop. Going to keep it forever even if it dies.
My first-gen 17" MBP was crap. The battery was already swelling when I took it out of the box and the hard drive crashed in the first week I had it. The GPU ended up killing the machine. Oh and back in those days a ton a software wasn't updated to run on Intel and ran in Rosetta which was very slow. Also the 6 bit dispay had terrible colour accuracy.
I'll go further, the only unibody models worth buying are the 2012s, because they support Metal. macOS is becoming more dependant on Metal with every new release, and running Big Sur and later without it is very frustrating (lots of bugs, incompatibility with applications like Maps and iMovie, etc).
But seriously, if you can afford a new mac, just do that instead. The design on the brand new ones is much cooler than the original unibody design and the first party accessories mach the design language of the computer. I love the old stuff but it's hard to ignore the fact that Apple does really seem to care about referencing that old design language in their new products.
My only laptop is still a 2007 MacBook Pro (2.2GHz with only 128MB of VRAM) with the fixed recalled graphics card. It originally died and Apple fixed it with the new version of the board that solved all those issues and has been working hard ever since. Obvious upgrades done were larger HD's and then an SSD, 6GB RAM etc. As long as you watch videos in 720p, no stuttering issues. I can do everything needed for a basic (excluding major video editing in HD/4K) productivity day, including Affinity apps (latest v1 of course), iWork, and even Zoom or FaceTime calls using 10.11 El Capitan! So I am one of those people. Longest running work computer ever! I don't know anyone using a PC of the same area for all these modern tasks.
My main machine is my 2010 Mac Pro - another great purchase - (can't edit 4K footage etc. on the MBP in a reasonable amount of time) but everyone else in the family is using that 2007 laptop for everything. Uses are endless. A newer laptop failed with the combined audio port, so the only laptop in the house that can even do a proper audio setup is now that same 2007 MBP. It has all the ports, including audio in and out, to do anything you need. Back in the 1990 / 2000''s, that was unthinkable. By the time 8 years went by it was virtually impossible to use for anything remotely modern of the day. Technology changed so fast back then (Mac updates every 6 months or so in the early 2000's), that you were extremely limited compared to the life of a Mac in the last 16 years.
It also looks great because I purchased a plastic wrap for it and installed it ASAP (the latest tech back then). Then replaced the wrap with a new one in 2010 or so. It still has it on it even though it has yellowed a bit. Considering the price I paid refurbished from Apple, it was worth every penny. I plan on keeping it going well into the future.
I've been though all the transitions since the 68K Mac LC 575, so this is amazing to me, how long it has lasted.
Might just be me, but those keyboards feel a lot better than the unibody ones!
No, I agree. I also like the looks of those. The feeling of the trackpad however not so much. The plastic on mine is fatiguing to use. Also my GPU failed so I will bake it in the oven for 9mins to hopefully resolder it and get it working again. I could handsolder it but that would take too much time for such an old device.
Oh, hope you can get it fixed! I have the older PowerPC G4 version, basically the same machine but a lot less usable as far as processing power and compatibility goes. Trackpad is indeed a bit of a pain to use, though a usb mouse can make up for that.
9:12 uh that power button predated the siri button.
Macbrick Pro
First of all, NVIDIA made a new revision of the GPU in 2010 that doesn't fail. Somewhat unreliable chips combined with Apple's terrible cooling can only lead to a failure!
Second of all, it will run 1080P UA-cam videos in macOS if you know how to have it do so.
And yes, the design is lovely!
I would really like to get one to perfect working condition. I have a 17" with a perfectly good motherboard with the revised reliable GPU, but the keyboard is dead, and so is the battery... I might restore it as a project, even though I'd like to restore a 15", I have a ton of parts for them except batteries but also I do not have a revised motherboard, so... I'll have to see what I end up doing.
The 2008 15" MacBook Pro was my first Mac, used all the way till 2012!
I used an Early 2008 MacBook Pro until about 2012. I saw the writing was on the wall for non-retina devices and got the last upgradable MacBook Pro. At the time I was doing IT for schools, got a good edu discount.
I had a 2008 for a long time and I absolutely loved it. Hands down best keyboard of any mac. I just got a 16" M2 Pro unit and this machine really is giving me 2008 MBP vibes, which is a great thing.
I'm sitting here screaming at the screen "SAY IT!" hahahahaha it has no 2 in the CPU's name and that means...
The keyboard on 2006 was the best keyboard made by Apple in my opinion
I remember having nothing but screen issues with these when they came out. I went from a 12" PowerBook to the early Intel 15" MacBook Pro. Three screens in a row had very uneven backlighting and then two with flickering. After that, I gave up and switched to a Thinkpad. Oh man, that was the glory days of the Thinkpad design. Apple has improved so much since 2006 and Thinkpads have been on a downhill slide. Fun to take a look back on this era.
I just bought a 2016 MacBook Pro 13 inch non-retina unibody. I upgraded the hard drive to an SSD replaced the battery, upgraded the memory to 16gb of RAM and installed Linux Mint.
It now has many more years as a functional laptop.
oh man, I remember those days, I didn't want to get intel inside so I kept my G4 tower maxed up. I bought one in 2007 to get a laptop but didn't like Lion that Apple thought or wished to replace a computer by having the same os on the phone and desktop but they failed. Then I bought an iMac I still use today..
I love my early 2008 MacBook Pro: I named it "Steve Martin", as a reference to the 1983 sci-fi comedy The Man With Two Brains, because it has two SSDs (one 500 GB 850 EVO in the SATA hard-drive bay and one 480 GB Intel 535 in the ATA optical drive bay).
In the hard-drive bay SSD, Steve Martin runs Snow Leopard on one partition and El Capitan on the other. Like you, I love the design of the original MacBook Pros: the case is similar to the PowerBook G4 but much easier to work on, the backlit keyboard looks cool and the screen is bright and detailed even today.
Unfortunately, installing a second SSD in the optical drive bay was a bit of a wash. Like the 2006-2008 Mac Pros, the first-generation MacBook Pros use an IDE/ATA bus for their optical drives, and a laptop IDE optical drive bus runs significantly slower than a SATA or even IDE hard-drive bus in the same laptop. I tried running a few operating systems on the SSD in the IDE optical drive bay, with poor results: Snow Leopard booted fast and ran fine, but Windows 7 and Ubuntu 20 booted terribly slowly and ran terribly (I assume Snow Leopard was designed to run on IDE, as the original 2008 MacBook Air has a tiny 1.8-inch IDE iPod hard-drive, but Windows 7 and Ubuntu 20 are not designed to run on IDE). As such, I use this slow-running second SSD just for storage.
You mentioned that the battery wasn‘t working on the pre-unibody MBP. These machines throttle down significantly with no working battery present. With a working battery installed, the performance of both machines should be very similar.
My first laptop / computer was a 2006 macbook pro! I bought it off craigslist around 2009/2010 for $500. It got me through the last few years of high school and early college despite having one of the Core Duo chips. Holy crap those 2 cores got HOT. I bought a new battery for it directly from the Apple Store (take that M2 MacBooks!) and later on the GPU ended up failing, so I replaced it with a Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro. Years later I found a used lower case complete with motherboard and fans for like $30. I swapped over my matte screen, keyboard and HDD just for nostalgia. Today it's hanging out on a bookshelf without a battery, which expanded. The OG MagSafe 85w charger worked great with my 2013 machine (with the adapter) for years, that charging brick just recently died also.
I had a pre-Unibody... suffered 2 motherboard failures. I replaced the second failed one with a faster 2.6GHz board. I actually chose this over the Unibody back in late 2008 because I preferred the matte finish display and the overall silver look and I saved like $250. The backlit keyboard was beautiful. Currently typing this on a failed GPU 2011 MBP, but this thing just keeps holding on. Idk about real-world performance over PPC though. Before my 2008 MBP, I had a dual 1.25 G4 MDD and that thing smoked it in my usage.
I love how he specifically mentioned finding one in the trash; that's exactly how I got my 2006 MacBook Pro XD
The only small caveat I would add is that you can have DosDude install a revised Gt8600 GPU that is reliable...if you want to pay for the job. So you CAN have a reliable 2008, it’s just not cost effective to achieve it.
Once again, my favorite Fruit Fly (Apple Fanboi) keeps it real. Interesting video from a historical perspective. This is so refreshing as almost every Fruit Fly channel is mouth-breathing and breathlessly contriving what will appear (and then not) at the next Fruit Circus. As someone who owns two mid-2012 unibody Macbook Pros, I still marvel at how amazing those machines were. Quality everywhere. Upgradeable. Easy to work on. Everything that the Fruit company no longer possesses.
I got one back in 2015 for my 10th birthday almost exactly 8 years ago. It worked good, and I think it was on snow leopard. One day it showed the 🚫 symbol on the home screen and I had to wait untill my uncle (he gave it to me) to help fix it. Turns out it had problems when he was able to get it to boot ( I don’t remember what was wrong with it), and he ended up recycling it. I got another one a couple years ago with the original box and it was good, it even came fully upgraded for a cheap price. It was ironic because soon after I got it, I saw another one for sale at a swap meet. I used it for a month or 2 because the bezel was already cracked and the screen basically broke.
in 2014 I got my first Mac, a 2007 15" MacBook Pro. I used that thing for 3 years, editing 4k video in Final Cut, making music in logic, school work, etc. show me another computer from 2007 that could be used to edit 4k video a decade later
Windows can’t save one of these either. The GPU doesn’t have proper driver support under windows 10. I don’t really mind though, these make great laptops for early OS X
To their credit, in the case of the Early-2008 and 2011 models, the GPU issues were in no way Apple's fault... The chipsets themselves were defective. In the case of the 8600M GT, luckily, by the end of 2008, nVidia released a revised version of the chipset, which completely solved the issue, and are 100% reliable (the revised materials were also used on the 9600M and MCP79 chipsets used in Unibody models). AMD, on the other hand, made no such effort, and as such we are stuck with defective Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series trash.
In the case of the 2010 15" models though, that WAS entirely Apple's fault, as they failed to spec an appropriate capacitor for filtering of the GPU framebuffer power rail. They can be fully repaired by bodging on a better capacitor.
Been dailying a mid '12 unibody since release. Besides some upgrades, it's needed some repairs. The original hard drive went bad, replaced the track pad, it's on its 3rd battery and just today replaced the WiFi antenna.
I do some 3d modelling, mainly Fusion 360. Takes a few minutes to start, and runs ~ok.
More than anything I'm just curious how long it will last. Been debating whether to do a workaround to get newer OS versions. Since Luke is a Unibody evangelist, I would love to see what solutions he'd try.
I find it crazy that it can’t run a video in 1080p on UA-cam because 10 years ago it would have been able to just fine. I remember in its day these machines were very powerful and people used to run boot camp and could play crysis on them, yet today they struggle to play a YT video!? I don’t know what’s changed?
Still cranking away on my 2014 MBP. Still hanging out with Big Sur and Apple still does OS updates.
In the middle of last year I bought a 2006 MBP with the glossy screen and a 2.16 Duo. I bought two mini-PC cards for it: an SD card reader, and an E-Sata card. I took out the drive (which also had XP on it) and put in a 1TB drive (and added Vista on it). I also bought a new battery. It boots a lot quicker than my 2012 MBP, but then again that has 8x the RAM.
I've got a 15" 2008 MacBook Pro running El Capitan. Bought it refurbished from Apple in late 2009 and still "use" it today. I use it to tether my camera for photography and also need it for scanning on my ooooold Microtek Flatbed Scanner, using FireWire and running VueScan software. I know I'm behind the times but for these functions it still works. When it finally dies I'll get a new Mac Laptop. Love your content, been watching for a long time.
I have a 2008 MacBook Pro running El Capitan and it's still perfectly usable today. In fact I used it until a few months ago to edit and upload almost all of my videos (upgrading it with 6 GB of RAM and an SSD helped with that) and now my dad uses it to do Zoom with his cousin in Australia, and it still works fine for that too. I now use a 2008 iMac which is equally obsolete but is equally obsolete but has a slightly faster CPU and a much larger full HD display. It's also still running El Capitan.
Before the graphics issues, this was such an upgrade from the PowerBook though.
I remember when these came out, I was working in IT at the time, the first Macbook 15" had 15+ recalls to it and when the corp I worked for at the time had ordered a batch of 100, nearly half were DOA. We were so happy when the unibody macs came out, those old ones really couldn't take abuse/drop damage and honestly they died left and right from hardware failures. The Powerbook G4's that came before it had the same durability problems but at least they were reliable, my 12" Powerbook G4 lasted 11 years before i finally put it out to pasture(covered in stickers and dents), didn't see a single first/second year macbook pro make it longer then 6 in a work environment.
The late 2006 core 2 duo is awesome
No it’s not
Also, the unibody models make great homemade routers, probably better than anything you can buy new today. Highly recommend. I put my 2012 to work with that, with the display disconnected (the OS doesn't support screen control). And it has a battery backup, if you run your modem and wifi APs on a UPS, you are golden.
You can use it as a router wtf
Don't forget that the earliest models are a "Core Duo" NOT a "Core 2 Duo" so that meant (official) MacOS support ended MUCH sooner due to the lack of 64Bit support on the "Core Duo" models. A huge shame!
I recently acquired a mid 2007 15 inch (for $20!!!) and i do enjoy using it and I really love the look! I’m still running mountain lion on it with a lighter version of Firefox and UA-cam playback is smooth! It does get quite hot and I do live in fear of GPU failure but ill enjoy it while it lasts 🙏. (It came with 4gb of ram and an OEM lightly used battery. I installed a 240GB SSD and applied new thermal paste.)
Still have my 2007 15" Santa Rosa MacBook Pro (obviously not my primary laptop anymore). It still boots up!
I used it continuously up to 2015, surprisingly enough. After getting a 2015 13" MacBook, I reloaded the Leopard OS so that it'll retain its old school retro vibe. I plan to get an after market battery for it (they're still out there) so that it'll regain it's 2.5 hours of unplugged glory.
The first generation design is nicer and the keyboard is absolute pleasure to type on. I used the 2006 MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo until end of 2014. It was a slow machine and was gradually getting slower the longer I used it. One day I spilled tea right on the keyboard, after which a couple of keys stopped working. But I was a poor student so I still kept using it for couple more years, until I saved enough money for another flawed machine, the late 2011 Unibody.
Despite all the negatives, I still have fond memories of the 2006 MBP. It served me well in college, I wrote my diploma thesis and tons of homework on it. And I loved using Snow Leopard so much that I was disappointed that I could not use it anymore on the 2011 machine. Little did I know that it actually was possible. I only found out two years ago :) Thanks for the video, it brought back memories.
I brought a 2006 15 inch MacBook Pro with the original box and accessories for 40€
Sums up why I’m not buying any Apple Silicon-based Mac until M3 or M4. Avoid first generation apple products.
9:21 This whole design language from the 2000s is now called „frutiger aero“.
I've got a old (donated) unibody and I use it as a DJing machine, doesn't need to be hugely powerful, and the only thing needed as far as parts was a new battery (the original battery had become a collection spicy pillows due to overcharging and had buckled the case bottom). Was also recently given one to fix, and that had just an issue where the SATA cable was shorting out on the case, causing intermittent disk problems. One piece of insulating tape later, and a fresh install and she was good to go back to her owner.
My cousin bought the original from early 2006 with features that ran her $2700.
It essentially became a brick to her in 2012 after only 6 years of use as 10.6 Snow Leopard became obsolete.
She handed it down to me in 2018 and despite the 1GB RAM I was able to make the thing surprisingly usable with Lubuntu 18.04LTS. Now unsupported again as of 2021, I'm looking for another 32-bit Linux distro, but I might finally put it to bed and focus on seeing if I can put opencore Ventura on my aunt's 2008 unibody Macbook (5,1) that's currently on Mojave
I still use an early 2008 pro for my iTunes library. I got it for free, and luckily the previous owner had gotten the logic board replaced through apple so it had the revised graphics chip that wouldn’t fail. It works pretty ok on MacOS Mojave and Windows 7.
Time to upgrade that thing. Both macOS Mojave and windows 7 are unsupported
@@emilsecker7881 It’s not on wifi. It’s not my main machine. Only for a really big iTunes library. I have a modern Macbook.
@@ethannn475 fair enough
I got the 2008 Macbook Pro as a birthday gift back in the day and use to hook it up to my Dad's cinema display when I got the chance. I got big into World of Warcraft, it was the times, and it handled it very well. Some of my fondest memory's are with this laptop playing WOW with friends in the woods by that old house, I was the warmest on the colder nights. This machine holds a special nostalgic place in my heart.
That machine served me nearly 4 years. The GPU was a party killer the entire time I had it. The screen would go black mid-game on occasion, after the years went by it was every time I booted up a game. This was the machine that ended my Apple love affair and was replaced by a PC laptop with an APU.
My dads friend used it for years till that GPU gave out. It sat on his entertainment center and was used for movies and playing cd's.
I wanted to get another at some point just cuz, but there was always another nostalgic mac with less issues to choose from (Lampshade iMac G4).
I had such MacBook Pro with a Core2Duo CPU back in the day. Back in the day, I was using a 12" PowerBook G4 which was a outstanding device. It was a small device and MacOS X 10.4 was super stable. 10.5 was in my opinion the worst release ever, as it had in the beginning a lot of bug - especially with waking up during standby.
Back to the MacBook Pro: Except for the slighly wobbly keyboard, the device was in general not that bad for its time. Powerful, good battery life. But, then the problems started: Every 3-6 months, I had to bring my MacBook Pro to repair: Logic board, Superdrirve, logic board, again logic board, Superdrive and again logic board.
Things have changed a lot since then and nobody remembers the quality issues Apple had back then.
The Original MacBook Pro didn’t suck. I still use mine but it gets very very hot.
I have a MBP '07 15 inch on Mavericks and it was running great, til the GPU said 'nah'. It's a shame because I do love the design and think it's a good design, but its time was up. I might fix it someday, but I still have my MBP 09 17 Inch dual booted on Snow Leopard/Yosemite and it's a great device for media consumption. Netflix runs great on it, and it doesn't get too hot compared to what the 07 MBP did (I also have two '06 originals, one of needs a harddrive replacement, and the other is being harvested for parts).
Not really having a collection, but I did buy a Macbook 4,1 black just for the sake of owning one finally some years ago. Loaded a small and cheap SSD to it and it really performs quite well with Snow Leopard. But as soon as you try to do something meaningful regarding modern web browsing it just shows its age. Same conclusion as with your pre unibody Macbook Pro I guess.
I bought a 17" Macbook Pro used. Had the graphics problem and Apple replaced the logic board for free. Other than the fact it got hot enough to cook on, it was a great machine. It had the high res display. I travelled with it and had a couple spare original batteries for flights and stuff. And as a photographer it was great for editing and backing up via FireWire to my LaCie rugged drive. Only real issue was the screen bezel/support cracking. I swaped it out twice. I extended the life with an SSD until it just coudln't cut it. Bought a mid-2015 MBP which is still my computer now.
Still have a 17inch power book G4 that boots up. 1.67 GHz I believe.
They were easy to break just by hands, they were instantly scratched, gpus were burning, always overheated, logic boards died easily, they were slow, but... They were beautiful. Especially the 17".
Just had to pull out my Macbook Pro 1,1 and leave a comment on this video XD
I have it running 10.6.8 with 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 ram. This thing has no right to be on the modern web, yet here it is… Barely XD
I use the early 2008 with dual boot windows vista + osx mountain lion. I have all my jailbreak + ipsw tools which no longer works on newer versions of mac os and windows. Redsn0w green p0ison ziphone. I love the 2008 macbook pro
I’m currently using the 17inch 2007 MacBook Pro, now I don’t use it that often as I have a m1 iMac that I use the most, but when I need a laptop it gets the job done, It’s currently running a patched version of Mojave, I found that it runs a lot better on Mojave then Catalina and I don’t find myself lacking many features, these MacBooks may not be the best ones apples ever made, but they will always hold a special place in my heart, especially the 17 inch
The best way to make an old MacBook not obsolete is by maxing out the RAM, adding an SSD and installing Windows 10, if you can find the drivers. Windows 7 will probably still work fine, though.
7:27 glad someone else remembers that the Jobs era of Apple wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows that a lot of other Apple fans misremember.
I had two of these back in the day. Both died. One from GPU failure, the other one kinda just... stopped booting? If you try to boot it, it'll just max out the fans and nothing will come up on the screen. It's really sad, because these machines are just gorgeous, I absolutely adore their design, but ahh man, the GPUs just suck.
My first Mac, a 17” with all the fruit. Replaced logic board 3 times for graphics issues, and the thing would get hotter than the sun. Still was a great workhorse for my fledgling video production business. Worst aspect for me was the sharp lower edge below the trackpad would dig into my wrists.
I had the early 2008 Macbook Pro, but I sold it after just at few months to buy the original Macbook Air. The performance was definitely a downgrade, but I loved my Air. In 2010, I bought the new Macbook Air and had it until the 3rd revision 12" Macbook was released. Now, I have a Mac Studio as my main computer but still keep the 12" Macbook for when I'm travelling.
I ordered one of the first of these off the line. I remember when a text message with a shipping notification came in on my Nokia phone that winter. Mine was built to order with the 7200 rpm drive. Good times! ;-)
family members of mine work in the television and film industry - they always had apple products and every model from the blueberry g3 to current iMac and Macbook models.. as a teenager i was always so excited to go to their house to witness all this tech when it was new. Those titanium macbook pro were like the coolest thing.. i was amazed by the keyboard backlighting and just the whole aesthetic. Dont get me started on the sunflower imac 😍 to this day they inspired me to use apple products and im happy as can be! My first computer was a hand me down G3 iMac, after that i got a used ibook g3 in highschool, for college i got a brand new Mid 2010 15'' Macbook Pro which i retired in 2020! replaced with a 13 inch m1 macbook pro as im currently back in school and hoping to get another 10 years out of this laptop! I will always have a love for apple computers! Phones.. eh theyre... fine! my iphone 12 gets the job done.
I had the first generation Macbook Pro, having graduated from a 12-inch PowerBook G4. It was ahead of its time back then; obviously, today, it's not going to hold its own against the Macbook Pros with M1/M2 chips.
I remember going on a high school trip in the spring of 2006. One kid had a brand new 15in Intel MacBook Pro and was using Bootcamp to play Elder Scrolls. Suffice it to say that he was the coolest kid there.
bro became linus from linus tech tips when he did his sponsor transition
I waited for the Unibody MacBook Pro and bought the high end model with 2,8 GHz CPU and 4 GB memory in late 2008. I used it daily until 2019.
I have an early 2009 Macbook Pro but because I was using the Ipad so much I forgot the password and I have tried every thing on line to get it to let me access it and can't.
Oddly it will let me on as a guest.
But how to get it to work again so I can use it to show my videos while I am doing them live on OBS on my Silicon M1 Mac Min & Logitech camera eludes me.
By the way I can still do videos on my Iphone 7 with no problem and have recently.
Honestly, I'm replying from my Early 08 MacBook Pro. I have a 2012 i7 MacBook I never use, I just prefer the look and the feel of my 2008. I have it decked out with an SSD, max ram, the works. I run an app to keep the fans working on high speed so I can keep the GPU cool. I ended up with it nearly new old stock, and it's worked perfect for a few years for me now, The battery even still works. Like you said in your video, these have a very pleasing to look at, and use design language. Going SSD with these increases their usability by a pretty large margin.
I daily drive my 2008. Sometimes it's the only computer I'll use for weeks at a time. If you don't mind a not perfect Mac OS experience then these are actually quite delightful laptops to still use.
I bounce between 720p, and 1080p depending on how hot the GPU is getting, it does both just fine. The SSD got rid of the lag like you showed in your video.
I was using a Mid 2009 13" Macbook Pro 8GB Ram and an SSD running Catalina with dosdude1's patch right up until January, when i bought an M2 Macbook Air. It does get the job done for basic task's. Has a few bugs though. The computer doesn't sleep when you close the cover. Apple Maps doesn't display properly. And some apps don't start properly(crash) the first time you try to start them. Other than that, its quite usable.
I bought a 2006 Macbook Pro for $15. I got it working just fine with more ram, albeit DDR2, and an SSD. I installed a copy of Snow Leopard and it was working but overheating to the point it was melting some rubber band it has in the back, but after some cleaning it was no longer an issue. It has no battery so performance was slower than normal but I managed to use it for recording music and teaching English classes since the course books were compatible hah
I don't use it anymore since I haven't got the time to play with it but I'm not going to sell it.
The early 2008 MBP is my first Mac. It had a lot of problems. The fan was replaced, the battery got replaced by Apple twice (then by myself another two times), the display was replaced due to faulty ribbon cable, then the GeForce 8600MGT along with the logic board was replaced. But I love the design. I still turn it on from time to time to just appreciate how beautiful it is. On the other hand, I hate the unibody "panda" MBPs so much that I don't own any of them until in 2016 Apple came with the thinner design and space gray color.
I had one and it suddenly died! I got the unibody one 15” and it got stolen with only two months of use. I still remember them both fondly😢
Not a word on the gorgeous keyboard on the original MBP ... I'd have that on a modern MBP any day.
I had the 2007 15" ... lasted 7 years running Logic Pro in a music setup. Lunched one logic board and two batteries, but no graphics issues.
I have both a 2008 15” and 17” that I use for photo and video editing still to this day.