You need to know what’s making that thing run. Why does this matter? If you’re looking to add a program or a peripheral to your device, you have to know the operating system, just like when you want to buy a car part you need to know the make and model of the car.

The default browser for Mac computers is Safari. It’s used on PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Plus, Edge runs only on Windows 10.Ĭhrome is the most popular browser. You might choose to run Chrome on a Windows, Mac, or Linux operating system, but you can’t run Internet Explorer or Edge on anything but a Windows computer. You can’t run every browser on every operating system. Popular browsers include Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. You might go straight online to check mail and read the news or watch a video. But at least in the education space, the future of Chrome OS looks fairly bright.Now, for many folks these days, their browser may be the only app they ever open on their PC. IDC also noted that gaming PCs were a big driver of growth, and it was a particularly strong year for the Mac.Īs some of the world may find a new kind of post- or late-pandemic normalcy later this year or next year, new sales figures will give a clearer indication of where things will go in the future, not just how they went in 2020. But the entire market grew overall, not just Chrome OS. Even then, IDC indicated that the increase in sales was driven in large part by the expansion of Chromebooks both within and outside of the education market.Īs students in many communities have had to attend class virtually from home and their parents have had to do work remotely, too, PC sales jumped during the year.

Last month, IDC's report on PC sales showed the first year of consistent growth of traditional PC (desktop, laptop, workstation) sales in years. The trend looks to be in Google's favor here, but 2020 was far from a normal year. Windows fell from 85.4 percent to 80.5 percent. Meanwhile, Chrome OS skyrocketed from 6.4 percent in 2019 to 10.8 percent in 2020.

Windows vs mac vs linux vs chrome os