e.g, this:
>We see people revel in the functionality of old Macs/PCs all the time
To me isn't something worth revel'ing in, it just feels like waxing nostalgic. But I understand that I'm in the minority here and people legitimately like this stuff (and people like old cars and such, so hey, I get it), but it's not for me.
For example one of the uses I'd like to do would be to repurpose it as a smart home display with my Home Assistant setup. Problem is the web interface uses features that the browser doesn't support. The suggestions on HA forums is to run a better browser remotely and use the iPad as a dumb display: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/options-for-lovelace-o...
This is why I'm for the bills to force Apple to allow 'sideloading'. Even with jailbreaking, I haven't seen an effort to make an alternative browser engine run on iOS, and my device is further hampered by it being an older 32-bit processor that Apple no longer support.
Even if those laws do pass, I doubt they'd update my old iPad. What I'll probably end up doing instead is ripping the display out and hooking it up to a HDMI controller board, and then connecting a Raspberry Pi to that.
Even if it hasn't support for running the up-to-date App Store app (hanging at about the point where a payment method is configured), I found out that if you have another iDevice, you can use that for purchasing and then the app appears in the purchased apps tab on the old iOS device, from where you can download it. Provided the app is supported on iOS 9 and/or the developer hasn't deliberately removed old versions.
That's how I've installed the occasional kid game or adventure game on my almost ten years old iPad mini (1!). That genre had seen a renaissance around 2012-2015, and some review comments on the app store even claim apps from that time run better on older iPads. iPad 2 is better even, actually has had a really decent run with updates for six years or so, with the latest updates only from last year (iOS 12? with metal support), so should be good for years to come.
The battery on my old iPad mini still goes strong with at least 8 hours, too; the display is no match to current devices, though.
If you have a project idea for it, sure, you can probably still build stuff for it with XCode. It's not a brick. But it's a lousy consumer device.