One thing I will NEVER get used to is people saying to mean

It's like saying car to mean Ford and just specifically Ford.

@gpowerf I guess it's a flip on how people will say "Google" or used to say "Xerox" or "Nintendo". Normally it's the brand for the thing, not the thing for the brand.

Of course it's not that, either, because ultimately it's short for IBM PC, which WAS a brand at some point.

So weirdly, technically, it comes down to Apple successfully suing all their clone manufacturers out of existence while IBM failed.

@gpowerf I wonder what we'd call computers if Apple II clones had been the brand-turned-standard instead. Certainly not "Apples".

I'd definitely be down for a parallel universe where Microsoft still dominates the platform but we call computers "MSXs", though.

@gpowerf it’s a synonym of IBM PC compatible though.

You had Amiga, Atari, Commodore, Archimedes and PC.

So much that Acorn had to make the RISC PC hybrid.

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