IF Mac = Macintosh THEN
you use a PC
END IF
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Only in the most generic term - not in common usage. A PC in common vernacular, in the US where I live, is a computer running a Microsoft OS. A mac is a computer running macOS - could be a MacBook, could be a Mac mini, could be an iMac.
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Ditto. A personal computer is a personal computer but a PC is an IBM PC and its successors.
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I always assumed PC to be the acronym of Personal Computer. 
Happy new year, btw.
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Because it is. Happy new year to you too!
For me a PC could run Windows, Linux or iOS, it is just a home computer, in contrast to a mini computer or a mainframe, if those still exist!
I learned English first by reading. The school system of teaching was boring and ineffective. But my interests, my hobbies and my research forced me to learn English by reading a lot every day. I believe it was the Internet which helped me a lot beginning in 1998. Then in 2009 I began to learn Turkish and I was developing a software very similar to LingQ, which read an URL from a turkish website and showed it to me inside a special website with translations of each word, sorting vocabularies by Zipf’s law and so on. I was able to learn a bit of Turkish just with this method. Unfortunately I lost the website and the code after transition to a new provider. One year ago I decided to learn English and therefore I wanted to reprogram the website again for me with new technology (Angular, Rust, etc), but while researching I found LingQ and WOW! it has all what I wanted to implement and even more.
So believe me, LingQ is especially good for people who loves to read and loves to learn by reading. It may not be perfect for every learning type, because some people learn solely by listening and speaking (the very extroverted persons), but who loves to read has the best advantage.
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I love the irony of us language-learning fanatics being surprised by the regional differentiation of a term’s meaning within our own lifetimes.
I remember watching this happen in the US. I was originally perplexed by the Mac vs PC distinction, since technically one should be a subset of the other rather than a separate category. But over time, it was encoded everywhere. Stores had MAC sections and PC sections, software boxes were labeled “MAC compatible” or “PC compatible,” and university computer labs were PC labs or Mac labs.
By the time the famous Mac vs PC commercials appeared, the narrower meaning of PC was already set.
Linux/Unix computers often ended up being called machines (e.g. Linux machine) even if you installed it on a computer that was a Windows PC!
Quite interesting, no? (I say this fully aware of the US/UK difference in the meaning of quite. 
)
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When did laptop and desktop came into the picture… ? 
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Don’t you dare put that laptop on that desk!
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Sure, and I know 3 people who have contributed to a writing system to 3 of the 3000 languages 
… they immersed themselves for decades into the culture in order to get there.
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I can’t speak on the Android version, but the iOs version is buggy. Sometimes it doesn’t count known words, sometimes it doesn’t count words read. I started out with the mobile version. that’s why my user name is goofy. I barely used the app. Then I tried the PC version and it’s so much easier for me. I like to find the word in dictionaries and copy paste the full definitions in the lingq field. I don’t like using the pre-made definitions because I want to get the full meaning of the word.
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When I say PC, I just mean personal computers in general. The mobile version sometimes don’t count your known words or words read. There’s a lot of bugs in it. I like to go to the dictionary in the target language and copy the full definition, that would be impossible for the mobile version. You can only choose the definitions that are there; but you don’t know what the correct one is because it’s a new word. So you’re sort of randomly selecting a definition. When I looked up Tagalog words in the definition, it would be different from the lingq definition. E.g. (nakarandam) in lingq it would just say “felt” but the real definition is (in past tense) felt (physically or emotionally (or) was aware of. The mobile versions don’t allow me to get the full feeling or understanding of the word.
LeifGoodwin said LingQ was buggy. I said only the mobile version is that bad. The PC version is better. Then somewhere down the grapevine it turned into what a personal computer is. lol
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Re: PC vs personal computer
In my experience no knowledgeable person has ever used the terms Mac and PC interchangeably. They are both personal computers. Some are Macs, some are PCs. Now some are Linux machines.
My first two computers were a Radio Shack TRS-80, which I sold to buy an Apple II. They were personal computers, not PCs.
Don’t you consider this a limitation.
Doesn’t the fact, that this discussion arose, imply, that people in different regions use those terms differently. Maybe even people from different generations.
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I hardly consider my experience a limitation.
Find me an example of a computer professional who calls an Apple computer a “PC,” then I’ll listen. You certainly won’t find anyone at Apple who makes that mistake.
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First of all, the whole discussion arose among people here in the forum, not among computer professionals. Secondly, from my experience, people who are working at computer selling stores are rarely professionals.
And as PC stands for personal computer, calling an Apple device a PC isn’t a mistake. But insisting on it beeing one is.
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I interpret this as meaning the web / browser version. I use it on android. Shortcuts work (althoguh could be improved). I use sentence mode in a simpel way and it tends to work in the same way consistently.