Computer

What is a Computer?

For most people, a "computer" is a personal computer, or a PC. A desktop PC. They may count laptops and notebooks within their definition of computer, but it usually stops there. If we want to be technical, the computer includes a lot of other things as well. Most importantly, smartphones are computers, tablets are computers, and a lot of other devices, that have apps in them, can connect to the internet, come with their own graphics cards, CPUs, memory, etc., are computers as well.

Although some computers are vastly different from others, fundamental principles of computing apply to all of them. For example, all computers have some sort of processor which runs at least one program. The program has to be an algorithm. They handle data that is stored in the form of bits and bytes.

Computers made for costumers are in fact far more similar than just that. They can run the same operating systems, have program programmed in the same programming languages, and use the same file formats for their files that can be transferred from one computer to another without much problem.

The reason you can just connect your PC to your smartphone or digital camera and transfer the photos is because smartphones and digital cameras are computers. There is a program that saves those JPEGs, or RAW photo files. This program is running in a processor. Therefore, if your camera makes computer image files, made out of bits and bytes, it has to be a computer itself. After all, only computers are capable of doing this.