• cobysev@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    As an IT guy in the early 2000s, it was really annoying to see all the “Mac vs. PC” arguments. PC stands for Personal Computer - a Mac is literally a PC! When I was a kid in the '80s-'90s, my schools all used Apple IIe computers (and later versions of Apple products as I got older), but they always called them PCs.

    But those Apple ads convincing people to ditch the frumpy old guy PC for the young, hot Mac guy did their job, and pop culture decided that a Mac wasn’t a PC.

    • optional@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      PC stands for Personal Computer, but that doesn’t mean that every personal computer is a PC. Just as VW stands for Volkswagen but not every wagon used by folks is a VW.

      Calling any personal computer PC would cause all sorts of confusion, as PCs are able to run specific pieces of software (which were literally marketed as »PC 3,5"«, »PC CD ROM« or something of the like) such as »PC (or MS) DOS«, Windows etc. It would have been pretty annoying if someone sold you a game, telling you that it runs on PCs, leaving it to you to guess which kind of personal computer they meant: Atari ST, Apple II, C64, or IBM PC. All of them are personal computers, but only the PC is a PC.

      Btw, all that was set in stone already in the 1980s and 1990, decades before Apple launched the Mac Vs. PC campaign in 2006. If your teacher called an Apple IIe PC, he was wrong about that, even before it was cool.