Then, around about the late 1980s or early 1990s if I remember rightly, some twit associated with SI (Systeme International, not Sports Illustrated) noticed that the computer industry was measuring things in multiples of 1024 rather than multiples of 1000, and had an absolute conniption fit about it. This Just Would Not Do. It was utterly declassé, quite beyond the pale, completely /nekulturny/. And he got on his high horse and opined that the computer industry should be reasonable and use powers of 10, regardless of whether or not powers of 10 were actually useful in the computer industry context.

And there it would probably have ended, had not his little snit come to the attention of the storage industry (not that I’d, like, you know, mention Seagate by name or anything …. wait, was that my out-loud voice?), which did the math and realized that this would mean they could take the exact same disk they were selling today, relabel it, and sell it as a bigger hard disk tomorrow. They promptly swarmed all over this idea like a pack of tiger sharks mobbing a wounded whale. It was like a license to print money. Today’s 100MB disk was tomorrow’s 105MB disk, and all they had to do was change the label. A 400MB disk was now a 420MB disk, with a corresponding price increase, for exactly the same hardware.

And we’ve been stuck with it ever since. With the enthusiastic backing of the computer storage industry, and over the objections of the rest of the industry, we got saddled with the silliness of the Gibi-rish units, and hard disks whose capacity was measured in different units than the memory that went into the same computer. And it all started because of one person who was offended that the practical usage that made perfect working sense in binary computer architectures was untidily inconsistent with the Great SI Scheme of Things.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The lawsuit is Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc., San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. 453195. In the suit, the plaintiff alleges that in the sale and marketing of hard disc drives, Seagate has denied and continues to deny each and all of plaintiff’s claims, and denies that anyone has been harmed or deserves compensation. The Court has not made a decision on the merits.

Plaintiffs and their counsel have previously been awarded attorneys’ fees, expenses and incentive awards in the amount of $1,792,000, to be paid separately and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members. Awarded amounts will be paid only if the settlement is approved.

All claims of settlement class members which were or could have been asserted in the litigation, based upon the facts alleged in the litigation (as well as in a related case entitled Lazar v. Seagate Technology LLC, et al., San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. 439700; and California Court of Appeal, Case No. A116350) will be released.

I can just see how some script somewhere breaks because of this dumb move. Is Apple going to change the definition of something like “du -h”, as well? Or are they even going to just update the man page for that? And, think about it. This is just a small and simple example.

I love using my Macs, but this move by Apple is not something I’d applaud them for. I’ve been using Apple computers since the Apple ][. Apple was OK with the definition of what a “kilobyte” is up to SL and now they think they should just suddenly make this change and hope to make it be less confusing for consumers with this change adopted in SL? Yes, there are some smart people at Apple but what they did with SL (whether Engineering or Marketing or Steve Jobs driven) was not a smart move.

I agree that by using different “unit symbols” is a way to clearly differentiate to avoid confusions and, like what other posters mentioned, Apple should at least have made it be an option as it’s definitely confusing to look at the file sizes for a shared drive from different platforms.

It’s not about old habits. It’s about how to properly approach introducing a change like this.

As a side note, quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte : “In The Art of Computer Programming, Donald Knuth proposed that this unit be called a large kilobyte (abbreviated KKB).” It’d be amusing if a “large gigabyte” is not referred to as GGB but as KGB. ;^)

kibibyte +2.4% or −2.3% kilobyte
mebibyte +4.9% or −4.6% megabyte
gibibyte +7.4% or −6.9% gigabyte
tebibyte +10.0% or −9.1% terabyte
petibyte +12.6% or −11.2% petabyte
exbibyte +15.3% or −13.3% exabyte
zebibyte +18.1% or −15.3% zettabyte
yobibyte +20.9% or −17.3% yottabyte

Knowing this, now, how many bytes is a kilobyte?

the only right awnser would be 1000, and awnsering 1024 is just plain dumb.

Please, use your brain for once. Apple is doing it right. Using “k-” to mean 1024 was wrong in the 1960s, and it’s even more wrong now.

Nevertheless, the decimal prefixes (M = 1,000,000) are way more logical for everything but some programming tools. Apple has switched to decimal prefixes, Linux is in the process thereof, and hopefully Windows will switch soon.

Actually, in Windows XP for example, if you right click and choose properties for a selected drive or group of files, Windows will already report exact bytes in decimal as well as an approximation in binary units. If they will switch to using decimal approximations (3.1 GB = 3,100,000,000 B) then this little aspect of the world will become a bit saner.

In the relatively rare cases where one needs binary prefixes, use the new unambiguous ones: KiB, MiB, GiB etc. Use KB, MB, GB etc only for power of ten.

This is not a marketing ploy, it is common sense once you get over old habits. Suppose disk drive manufacturers used binary prefixes. Then 1.5 Terabytes would be 1536 Gigabytes, or 1500 Gigabytes would be about 1.465 Terabytes. Every time you cross a 1000 boundary in adding or multiplying, you would need to adjust your figures. Quick: 400 files averaging 22 MBytes each would take up how many gigabytes? Decimal usage answer: 8800 MB or 8.800 GB. Binary usage answer: 8800 MB or 8.594 GB Or round to 8.6 GB. Even as a programmer, the former makes a lot more sense for normal usage.

Currently, a 700 MB CD holds 700 x 1024 x 1024, while a 4.7 GB DVD holds 4.7 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 and a 1.44 MB floppy held 1.44 * 1000 * 1024. USB 2.0 rates are 480 x 1000 x 1000 bits/sec, a 500 GB drive holds around 500 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes. The only way this is going to get consistent is to adopt decimal throughout.

It’s time we cleaned up our acts. While I mostly work with Windows and Linux, I applaud Apple for leading the way and having the courage to stand up to the conservatives who have trouble switching. It will not be long before Apple folks are somewhat justifiably ridiculing Windows for it’s backwardness in this regard (rather than complaining to Apple). Hopefully Microsoft will see the light.

Actually, displaying storage as multiples of 1024 was an early fudging of the numbers to make it easier for us humans to read the numbers. A computer doesn’t think “this file is 1024 bytes,” it thinks, “this file is 10000000000 bytes”.

1024 was “close enough” to 1000 for early programers to consider at a “kilo” (aka 1000) byte, to make larger number of bytes easier to read. But as storage sizes have increased, this arbitrary way of counting has gotten outmoded and confusing, since it’s consistently borrowed base-10 abbreviations, kilo, mega, giga, and used them in a base-2 environment.

I hope we can disable this misrepresentation in 10.6.1. I couldn’t find a way in 10.6.

DECIMAL kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes were wrong in the 1980s (when the drive manufacturers started lying about drive capacity), and they’re even more wrong now.

Computers simply do not allocate and use memory (including block-structured storage such as disk space, flash memory cards, or USB sticks)) in *ANY* unit that is a multiple of 10.

Therefore, to be accurate, the storage on any block-structured storage medium MUST be marketed using multiples of 1024 bytes — otherwise it’s a lie, plain and simple.

Until the drive manufacturers stop using “marketing” gigabytes, they will be as wrong as TV manufacturers who used to lie routinely about the diagonal measures of their picture tubes. They’re stating that the device has more capacity than it really does. Period.

Besides, computer doesn’t think in base-2 gigabytes, it thinks in bytes. Kilos, megas, gigas, teras and so on are only to make the representation more pleasing and easier for our human brains to visualise.

Sometimes, correcting a fault is worth the hassle. Now only if certain other major vendors followed suit…

A kilobyte is 1000 bytes, not 1024. That’s 1111101000 in binary, and no, computers have no trouble storing this in memory or representing it as “1000 bytes”.

Dividing by 1024 makes absolutely no ******* sense when reporting numbers like this to the user. It adds an extra layer of complication and calculation with no benefit. I suppose when Google Earth says “256 km”, you think it means 262,144 meters? Because computers work in base 2, right? Idiots.

And it’s **** retarded. This issue is, as pointed out, the HD capacity, because users don’t understand the computer science business…drive manufacturers should be keel-hauled for their marketing guys pulling this stunt. What Apple SHOULD have done is report the salesguy number FOR THE DRIVES ONLY, so the Genius Bar guys don’t have to sigh heavily and roll their eyes when the 200th guy comes up to them to ask why the 250GB drive in their Macbook is 237Gb in the Finder and What Kind Of Fool Does Apple Think They Are.

The problem is, now 200 guys will be coming up to the Genius Bar asking why their files are always bigger on their Mac than on their Windows server at work. I predict a LOT of eye rolling at the Genius Bar.