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Japanese people call computers PC in Japanese-made katakana expression. English speakers usually use laptops for that. Is PC used to mean a computer in English-speaking countries?

ilkkachu
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tak
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5 Answers5

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Yes.

"PC", standing for "Personal Computer" (pluralized "PCs" when abbreviated), is a valid English phrase, and does refer to both desktop and laptop computers. Indeed, the term originated in English, though if you want specifics as to how the term originated, perhaps you should ask the Retro Computing SE site.

For historical reasons, computers made by Apple are typically not referred to as PCs. They're Macs.

nick012000
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    This historical reason is that in 1981 IBM produced a computer called the IBM Personal Computer. The name was abbreviated "IBM PC". Other companies made compatible computers which they described as "IBM PC compatible". This got shortened to "PC Compatible" and then to just "PC's". – David42 May 06 '21 at 01:06
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    And to add to @David's answer, Apple Macintosh computers were not "IBM PC Compatible." – randomhead May 06 '21 at 01:19
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    As an off-topic addition : PC is widely used in the french speaking world too – CharybdeBE May 06 '21 at 08:26
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    Might be worth making even more explicit that ‘PC’ is a countable noun: one PC, two PCs (as the question could assume otherwise). – gidds May 06 '21 at 08:37
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    Even though in principle a PC can be a laptop, in practice many people use the term "PC" to refer mainly or solely to desktops. It's not common to hear the phrase "laptop PC". And if someone has a laptop, it's much more common for them to refer to it as their laptop than as their PC, even if they don't have any other PCs. Many people also say things like "Should I take a PC or laptop for uni? Laptops are more portable but then a PC is more powerful" ( https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1970790 ). That may not please pedants or IT experts, I agree. – rjpond May 06 '21 at 10:03
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    @rjpond I am an IT guy and consider all computers "PC's" but I need to be constantly aware that the majority of my customers tend to distinguish between laptop and PC (for desktops and towers). Not keeping that in mind can lead to a great deal of confusion. – Tonny May 06 '21 at 10:56
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    Macintoshes of old weren't PC compatible, but then Macs have used Intel processors for 15 years, and those might be surprisingly PC compatible. (Not sure about the details, though, and one could wonder how "IBM PC compatible" current PCs are anyway.) Also, you probably wouldn't call a rack server a "PC", even though the hardware inside is similar to a desktop PC, equally (in-)compatible, and could run the same operating systems etc. And a Raspberry Pi probably isn't a PC, even if you use it as your personal desktop computer. The phrase "PC" is vague enough to be mostly meaningless, really... – ilkkachu May 06 '21 at 11:01
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    @ilkkachu "Macintoshes of old weren't PC compatible, but then Macs have used Intel processors for 15 years, and those might be surprisingly PC compatible" I'm aware. Hence, "historical reasons". – nick012000 May 06 '21 at 11:06
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    Commodore referred to the Amiga line as "Amiga Personal Computers" – Zenzizenzizenzic May 06 '21 at 11:34
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    @Zenzizenzizenzic That's right. The term "personal computer" was already in wide use when IBM released the IBM Personal Computer. The term dates back to at least 1962. When the term was coined computers were huge machines in rooms by themselves with operators standing by. In contrast a future "personal" computer would be placed on a table for one person to use. That incidentally is why servers are not, as ilkkachu points out, servers are not "personal computers" even if they are compatible with the IBM PC. – David42 May 06 '21 at 13:47
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    PC for (desktop) computer is also used disambiguation when talking about gaming - console gaming, mobile gaming versus PC gaming or PC gamers. – Torque May 06 '21 at 14:25
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    Context is used to disambiguate "PC". If you're in a context where the Mac/Windows distinction is relevant, PC means Windows PC. If you're in a context where portability is important, it means desktop rather than laptop. But in more general contexts, it means anything that isn't a mainframe (or minicomputer -- does anyone still use that term any more?). – Barmar May 06 '21 at 14:30
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    @Barmar so is my xbox console, which is basically just a PC with a certain configuration and OS, a PC or a console? Is the raspberry pi based space station tracker connected to my TV a PC? Or is it only the raspberry pi 400 personal computer kit that qualifies? There’s more than just “personal” involved in PC I think. There’s also the idea of “general purpose”. – ColleenV May 06 '21 at 15:21
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    @ColleenV Indeed, it's again context dependent. If you see a kiosk in the metro, it's just a kiosk; but if a bug causes it to show a Windows error screen, now it's a PC. – Barmar May 06 '21 at 15:25
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    To further muddy the waters, there was a line of computers called "PowerPC"s, which were Apple computers. The name "PowerPC" technically referred to just the processor, which was IBM, but in common use it referred to the whole computer, a rare case where an Apple product had "PC" in the name. – Darrel Hoffman May 06 '21 at 16:30
  • @Tonny: I wouldn't say that ALL computers would be considered PCs. E.g. the several IBM BlueGenes I've worked with weren't. Even various clusters, even though they were made of units that could be stand-alone PCs. And back in the early days (before Linux, basically), there was a distinction between PCs and workstations that usually ran some Unix variant. – jamesqf May 06 '21 at 16:33
  • "For historical reasons, computers made by Apple are typically not referred to as PCs. They're Macs." – Huh? Apple itself referred to the Apple II as a "personal computer" in its advertisements: "Introducing Apple II. You've just run out of excuses for not owning a personal computer." Not a single person in the world has ever referred to an Apple II or a Lisa as a "Mac". – Jörg W Mittag May 07 '21 at 18:43
  • @JörgWMittag The use of ‘PC’ as an acronym in reference to Apple systems (even when ‘personal computer’ is an accurate description) has not been common for at least a decade due to Apple’s own advertisements (the old ‘Get a Mac’ campaign from 2006 through 2009). Even prior to that though, the distinction that a Mac was somehow different from a PC was common, because once the IBM PC clones started popping up, the term PC very much solidified as referring to such systems and almost nothing else. – Austin Hemmelgarn May 08 '21 at 01:43
  • While Apple computers are not referred to as PCs, they are referred to as "computers", still. For what it's worth. – TylerH May 08 '21 at 09:38
  • @JörgWMittag You may be suffering/benefiting from having been around at the time they were released, but I've definitely heard people refer to Apple IIs as Macs (mostly folks under 30 or so). Not a big deal, because OP is talking about Apple computers in 2021. You won't find Apple IIs or Lisas for sale by Apple anymore, only in museums or articles about "really ancient computers". – TylerH May 08 '21 at 09:41
  • I had a personal computer that we called a PC before the IBM PC was released, so I know the term did not originate with IBM because I remember thinking it was interesting that IBM was trying to trademark the PC acronym that we were already using (Mine was an Atari 400 which competed with the TRS-80 and Apple II back then) – draca May 08 '21 at 13:46
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Yes, PC is commonly used in English to mean a computer (one PC, two PCs), but different speakers use it to mean slightly different categories of computer.

The term originally stood for "Personal Computer", but became specifically associated with a computer called "PC" released by IBM in 1981.

  • The IBM PC was followed by a number of official successors and unofficial "clones" designed to be compatible. These came to be referred to as "PCs", in contrast to other makes of computer, particularly the Apple Macintosh.
  • MS-DOS, and then Microsoft Windows, was the dominant operating system on these "IBM-compatible PCs". Some people would consider "PC" to imply a computer running Microsoft Windows, as opposed to the same hardware running Linux.
  • The original PC was for a single user, and mostly for office/business use. A multi-user server is not called a "PC", and a games console is not called a "PC", even if the hardware is basically identical. The term "gaming PC" is used, and is distinct from something specifically designed as a "games console".
  • Similarly, the early "PCs" were all desktop computers, so some people will use "PC" to mean a desktop rather than a laptop.

In my experience, PC is usually used when trying to make one of these distinctions, e.g. "should I buy a PC or a Mac?", "the software is available for PC and Linux", "the game is better suited to a PC than a console", "are you using a PC or a laptop?"

The word "computer" can refer to the broader category of all desktop and laptop computers, e.g. "log onto our website on your phone, tablet, or computer".

IMSoP
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    "some people will use "PC" only for a computer running Microsoft Windows." I've heard the term "Linux PC" before. – nick012000 May 06 '21 at 22:52
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    @nick012000: But others of us have numerous PCs (4 on/under my desk at the moment), all of which run Linux. – jamesqf May 07 '21 at 00:35
  • @nick012000 That's why I said "some people" not "it is universally agreed". A search for "PC or Linux" gives plenty of hits clearly using it in the sense of "computer running Microsoft Windows". – IMSoP May 07 '21 at 08:03
  • "The term originally stood for "Personal Computer", but specifically became popular when IBM released a computer called the "PC" in 1981." There is no evidence of that. – Cris Luengo May 07 '21 at 22:41
  • In fact, "personal computer", shortened to "PC", was used for all non-shared computers when those first appeared, and most (if not all) manufacturers used that term to describe their systems, to set them apart from the time-share machines popular at the time. IBM PC became very popular, and caused PC to become synonymous with a particular hardware configuration in popular parlance, but you shouldn't think that the term became popular because of that, it already was. – Cris Luengo May 07 '21 at 22:46
  • @CrisLuengo As others pointed out, there are other uses of the acronym that make analysis tricky. If you look at "a PC", it picks up very clearly in the early eighties: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+PC%2C+personal+computer&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ca%20PC%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpersonal%20computer%3B%2Cc0 – IMSoP May 08 '21 at 12:36
  • @CrisLuengo That said, popularity of the term itself wasn't really the key point, so I've reworded that sentence. – IMSoP May 08 '21 at 13:12
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The Personal Computer (IBM 5150), or PC, was a computer model from IBM first sold in 1981. It was followed in 1984 by the Portable Personal Computer (IBM 5155). The North American company IBM Corp. had been the leading actor in enterprise and administration computing hardware and software for decades up to the '80s, precisely and ironically until the PC revolution whose advent they largely accelerated.

enter image description here
IBM PC label. Source

Large, expensive and delicate computers of this time were generally rented, not sold, and put in the hands of highly qualified technicians, still in 1980. This had been a very profitable business for decades, the golden times. So the release of affordable computers for small businesses and wealthy individuals was quite a big event. It created the whole new era we know. You can read about the story here.

enter image description here
The first Portable Personal Computer for less than $1,600, 1982. Source

It was made possible by the mass production of highly integrated circuits, collectively known as microprocessors, and specifically CPUs, for central processing units, microprocessor flavors optimized to execute programmed operations.

Around the world small computers are called by different names, referring to some of their aspects which directly derive from this story:

  • Individual computer is probably the most correct name, as a personal computer is a computer designed to be used by a single person at once (it is not a time-sharing computer used by enterprises, now split into two separate categories: Mainframes and servers).

    enter image description here
    Ad for individual computer tables. Source

  • PC and PC clone (not used anymore) have been a kind of super-family for all individual computers designed from IBM specifications used to build PC, PC-XT and PC-AT models. PC specifications were later updated by PS/2 specifications, the ones by which the latest IBM personal computer was designed, but PC-compatible was kept for marketing continuity.

  • For years, 80 or 90% of the units sold were PC-compatible units. The remaining 10 or 20% were mostly Osborne, Apple and a myriad of other proprietary systems. The small companies disappeared, and Apple was close to the same fate. So PC have been the dominant design for years and the phrase lost its initial meaning, it now tends to be synonymous for individual computer.

  • Apple systems, IIe, Macintosh, vibrant iMacs, PowerBook or MacBook for the main ones, have their own names (e.g. a Mac) even though Apple has progressively adopted many of the PC specifications, including x86 CPUs, the largest design difference until then. For this reason, it's not unusual now to refer to personal computers of any sort as PCs with different OSes. This is the same as for smartphones, which are managed either by iOS or by Android: there is no big differences between all these devices.

    enter image description here
    Ad for a game which works on all PCs, regardless of the OS. Source
    (Contrary to a widespread legend, MacOS isn't in any way original. Steve Jobs, fired by its board in 1985, in need of an OS for his new company (NeXT) reused Unix, a product created by telephone companies AT&T and Bell, under the name of OSX. In 1997 Apple, close to bankruptcy, recall Jobs and OSX becomes MacOS with the success we know.)

  • In the country I live in, the first individual computers were sold early: Micral, like micro- sold in 1973, Portal, like portable, first laptop in 1980. Because the names were kind of set prior to IBM PC and Apple products' existence, we largely use the neutral word microcomputer (microordinateur), often shortened into micro. This refers to the microprocessing unit the device is based on, and this truly distinguishes them from mainframes, the industry computers. Less often one can say PC or Mac.

With the arrival of laptops, the naming conventions have been even more blurred. While laptop is the Anglo-Saxon name invented by Compaq, the leading manufacturer of laptops when they were introduced, most people in France call them portable computers ("ordinateurs portables") or just *portables" or still microcomputers. "PCs" is most often used in the office context, just like many other words from Anglo-Saxon business language (manager, B2B, subcontractor, telco, open space, ...).

mins
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    I am a fan of this answer. – Eddie Kal May 08 '21 at 21:09
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    Should probably note that the very newest Macs are no longer PCs (they use ARM CPUs rather than x86). – Vikki May 09 '21 at 00:59
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    This feels like an interesting answer to a different question. The suggestion of "individual computer" seems to be based on logic rather than actual usage; the example shown is probably "an individual table for a computer" rather than "a table for an individual computer". Since this site is for people learning English, the terms used in France aren't really relevant either. – IMSoP May 09 '21 at 08:11
  • @IMSoP: I don't challenge the fact PC is the Anglo-Saxon wording for desktops (shared with workstation), I explain why. Individual computer, in Europe, means any "personal computer" and "micro" is a very common replacement. There was once magazines with names like L'ordinateur individuel, SVM micro or Micro hebdo. These titles reflect well how people here talk about computers. – mins May 09 '21 at 08:37
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  • PC is not "Anglo-Saxon"; the language is called English, and it's the topic of this site. 2) The wiki page you linked to is about a German company with that name, and provides no evidence for it being a common term. 3) What people call it in French is interesting, but not useful to English Language Learners, which is the name of this site.
    • – IMSoP May 09 '21 at 09:03