afaik it's essentially an apartment but you own your domicile, and have a stake in the building as a whole along with the other "tenants" who are also co-owners.

An apartment is a structural classification (one of many separate dwellings within the same building, usually flats); a condo is a legal classification for how ownership of a dwelling works (collective ownership of parts of a property, individual ownership of other parts). If a home is both, it's usually referred to as a condo, so "apartment" usually implies that it's rented.

So. The oversimplification is you own a condo and you rent an apartment, however, you'll also run into definitions about where the front door gets you. Think of the difference between a motel and a hotel. With an apartment there's a hallway that you enter through one door, and then enter your apartment through a door along that hallway. A condo, there will be an open air coveted stairwell that your door will be accessed from. Which is another layer of oversimplification since in a lot of old developments you'll have a bottom floor commercial property and an upper floor apartment accessed from an open air door at ground level with a set of stairs reaching the apartment (imagine bobs burgers).

Point is. From living conditions perspective, they're very similar. The important thing is ownership models and that's the thing you should be looking into. You can rent a condo, you can own an apartment. It all just depends on local laws and definitions

rental vs mortgage