• TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    “PC” actually refers to a specific architecture based on the original IBM PC. PCs are personal computers but not all personal computers are PCs.

    It’d be like as if we still referred to ARM-based devices as being “Acorn” devices. It’s one of those brand names that the public has turned into a generalized noun, like Kleenex and Bandaids.

    • palordrolap@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      Yep. The phrase “Personal Computer” is fairly old at this point. Everyone and their dog called their computer product a “Personal Computer” back in the 80s. The id-plate on the Commodore 128 and 64C computers had that exact phrase under the computer name.

      “IBM-compatible personal computer” is a wordy phrase, and even before the “IBM-compatible” part became somewhat anachronistic, it was being abbreviated to just “PC”, heralding the death-knell for most other systems that otherwise had every right to use the name.

    • Johanno@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      There is exactly one arm like “pc” out there that isn’t using arm but an open source processor. And it can run almost anything an arm pc can.

      Also my RaspberryPi is a pc in my opinion.

      • folkrav@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        It’s all computers. How “personal” it is just depends on what you do with it. I used what was technically a desktop PC as a home server for years. Without a monitor and kb/m plugged in, there’s not much personal computing going on with it. It’s mostly semantics, in the end it’s all computer systems lol