Editing IBM PC compatible (section)

==The IBM PC compatible today==
{{See also|Legacy-free PC}}
The term "IBM PC compatible" is not commonly used presently because{{citation needed|date=September 2024}} many current mainstream desktop and laptop computers are based on the PC architecture,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/lf.mspx|title=Microsoft.com|website=[[Microsoft]] }}</ref><ref name="google1">{{cite book|author=Scott Mueller|title=Upgrading and Repairing PCs|url=https://archive.org/details/upgradingrepair100muel|url-access=registration|year=2003|publisher=Que Publishing|isbn=978-0-7897-2974-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/upgradingrepair100muel/page/956 956]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/legacy.htm|title=What does "Legacy" mean in the world of computers?|access-date=2024-09-08|archive-date=2018-09-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180926213801/http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/legacy.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.|title=InfoWorld: The Desktop Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WT0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA40|date=21 August 2000|publisher=InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.|issn=0199-6649}}</ref>{{rp|39–40}} and IBM no longer makes PCs. The competing hardware architectures have either been discontinued or, like the [[Amiga]], have been relegated to niche, enthusiast markets. In the past, the most successful exception was [[Apple Inc.|Apple]]'s [[Macintosh]] platform, which used non-Intel processors from its inception. Although Macintosh was initially based on the [[Motorola 68000 series]], then transitioned to the [[PowerPC]] architecture, Macintosh computers [[Mac transition to Intel processors|transitioned to Intel processors]] beginning in 2006. Until 2020, Macintosh computers shared the same system architecture as their Wintel counterparts and could [[booting|boot]] Microsoft Windows without a [[Orange Micro#PC compatibility|DOS Compatibility Card]]. However, with the [[Mac transition to Apple silicon|transition]] to the internally developed [[ARM architecture family|ARM]]-based [[Apple silicon]], they are again the exception to IBM compatibility.

The processor speed and memory capacity of modern PCs are many [[Order of magnitude|orders of magnitude]] greater than they were for the original [[IBM Personal Computer|IBM PC]] and yet backwards compatibility has been largely maintained{{snd}} a 32-bit operating system {{As of|2008|alt=released during the 2000s}} can still operate many of the simpler programs written for the OS of the early 1980s without needing an [[emulator]], though an emulator like [[DOSBox]] now has near-native functionality at full speed (and is necessary for certain games which may run too fast on modern processors). Additionally, many modern PCs can still run DOS directly, although special options such as USB legacy mode and SATA-to-PATA emulation may need to be set in the BIOS setup utility. Computers using the [[UEFI]] might need to be set at legacy BIOS mode to be able to boot DOS. However, the BIOS/UEFI options in most mass-produced consumer-grade computers are very limited and cannot be configured to truly handle OSes such as the original variants of DOS.

The spread of the [[x86-64]] architecture has further distanced current computers' and operating systems' internal similarity with the original IBM PC by introducing yet another processor mode with an instruction set modified for 64-bit addressing, but x86-64 capable processors also retain standard x86 compatibility.