Apple hit with class action lawsuit over the size of iOS on devices

[TheProfosist]

Nothing. The way it calculates space causes it to steal storage from users.

I say it's the drive manufacturers...

[LAwLz]

I think the drive manufacturers are more at fault here than the OS developers.

Well I disagree. The SI units were here long before some OS manufacturer decided to change what they mean on their products.

Kilo means 1000, not 1024. Mega means a million, and so on.

 

All the OS manufacturers has to do is put an "i" between # and B. MiB, GiB, TiB etc... No more confusion. It's not that hard...

[Godlygamer23]

I say it's the drive manufacturers...

It's not. Formatting a drive on Macs yields full capacity.

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

All the OS manufacturers has to do is put an "i" between # and B. MiB, GiB, TiB etc... No more confusion. It's not that hard...

 

First, an OS is not a physical medium to be manufactured, only developed as a software.

 

Second, they currently do not do this, and practically speaking, they cannot do so. The OS "manufacturers" need to take into account the tech-illiterate average joes. They scarcely understand #B, but very few of them has an idea there is even such thing as #iB. If the OS is to label the storage to #iB, there would be many frustrated consumers, struggling to understand the difference between the two. Even in the professional environment, there had been disagreements about which meant what.

[Jimbillroo Digital]

This action was Overdue.

[TheProfosist]

It's not. Formatting a drive on Macs yields full capacity.

Your saying formatting a 2TB drive yields 2TB not ~1.81TB? It's still the same amount of storage NTFS doesnt use all that up its 1000 vs 1024 bytes = 1 KB. There should have never been this issue I mean they created the 1000 one to make it easier for consumers yet it isn't because the OS and programs still use 1024. Also how is 1000 any easier a larger number means bigger drive and the math is the same for cost per unit... Also they still have to label the packaging because it's confusing and people still call about missing space.

Also even more confusing than this is SSD's. Some were treated like ram because it's flash (so 1024) and and others like hard disks because that's what it's replacing (so 1000).

[TheProfosist]

Well I disagree. The SI units were here long before some OS manufacturer decided to change what they mean on their products.

Kilo means 1000, not 1024. Mega means a million, and so on.

All the OS manufacturers has to do is put an "i" between # and B. MiB, GiB, TiB etc... No more confusion. It's not that hard...

Then you'd just confuse consumers even more because it's been that way for so long. Also that still wouldn't Fox how the HDDs are currently labeled.

Either way are there even base 2 si units? We could just be like oh hey its a computer were in base 2 so it's 1024 instead of 1000.

Either way that change only made it more confusing I'm afraid, even if it may be more correct.

[TheProfosist]

This action was Overdue.

How so?

[zacRupnow]

That is not quite as easy to do as you are making it sound. Also, you have to keep in mind the formatting of the file systems. For example, desktop storage never has the advertised space equal to the free space, regardless of whether an OS is installed or not.

I know thats not how it works, but I think its how it should work.

[SpaceCore]

sue because consumer is ignorant.

 

'Murrrca!

[LAwLz]

First, an OS is not a physical medium to be manufactured, only developed as a software.

Sigh... You know what I meant.

 

Second, they currently do not do this, and practically speaking, they cannot do so. The OS "manufacturers" need to take into account the tech-illiterate average joes. They scarcely understand #B, but very few of them has an idea there is even such thing as #iB. If the OS is to label the storage to #iB, there would be many frustrated consumers, struggling to understand the difference between the two. Even in the professional environment, there had been disagreements about which meant what.

But they don't understand #B. That's why we have people complaining about their 1TB drive only showing up as 931 "GB" in Windows.

The problem that I see is that the OSes don't actually report the size in GB, but in GiB. We end up with two different definitions of GB. If people saw that their HDD said 1TB and their OS saying TiB then I assume most people would be okay with the simple explanation of "1 TiB is bigger than 1TB". Instead we end up with this bollocks "1TB is actually 1024TB and HDD manufacturers are scamming you" which is just wrong and leads to stupid lawsuits like the one against WD.

 

 

 

Then you'd just confuse consumers even more because it's been that way for so long. Also that still wouldn't Fox (I assume you meant fix) how the HDDs are currently labeled.

Either way are there even base 2 si units? We could just be like oh hey its a computer were in base 2 so it's 1024 instead of 1000.

Either way that change only made it more confusing I'm afraid, even if it may be more correct.

I think it would cause less confusion. Right now we got "I bought a 1TB HDD but it's not 1TB!". If we changed it people would (hopefully) notice that the OS says TiB instead of TB like the HDD packaging. It's not that big of a leap from seeing two different measurements to thinking "maybe they don't mean the same thing".

 

I don't think there is any official SI standard, but ISO are the ones who made the official base 2 units, and they are called kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi etc.

 

The whole problem is that we have a standard for base 2 measurements but OS developers are not using it. They decided to use the kilo prefix and then change the definition even though it meant 1000 long before they started making their OSes.

You don't just take a standard measurement, change the definition and then expect everyone else to follow your new definition.

 

I think changing the labeling in the OSes would obviously be more correct, and it would lead to less confusion because "Kib and KB are not the same thing. A KiB is slightly bigger than a KB" is a lot easier to understand than "the KB measured by computers are not the SI kilo. Computers use base 2 so your computer counts a kilo as 1024 while a regular kilo, which the HDD manufacturers use is 1000.".

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

-snip-

 

This goes back to what @TheProfosist and myself are saying; unless gigabyte and gibibyte are clearly defined to the general audience, which it is not, the change you are asking for will simply not happen.

 

Let me ask you one question: have you tried to explain to the general audience what the different standards are? It is not fun, especially when two professionals would tell two opposing definitions.

[Yoinkerman]

So they feel apple is shortchanging the consumer about advertised space. This is a good thing. We, as consumers, want people to go to bat for us. Even if they're wrong,we still want it to happen. Industry standard or not, a 16gb capacity phone that only has 8gb available is crap. Anyone who thinks otherwise should stop sucking the teats of corporations and realize we can get whatever we want. There's nothing stopping companies from having the phone os on its own 16gb storage and usable space on a different 16gb storage. Only that either the consumers, or governments aren't making them. They can be disingenuous about the available space, and nothing happens.

Personally I don't really care, my device has expandable storage, but I can see why some people would. Especially people with iPhones and iTunes.

The next point is the mb mib nonsense. The only reason hard drive manufacturers changed to 1b bytes is 1tb or whatever junk they're using was to save millions and millions of dollars while giving customers less and getting away with it. It has literally nothing to do with any kind of SI standard. Drives used to be measured in base two like everything else in a computer, since computers operate in base two. But someone at the hard drive companies had a great idea, they said "what if we switch to base 10 and misdirect people into thinking it was due to wanting to adhere to SI numbering standards? It'll be great, we'll earn way more money, and people with fight about it, completely ignoring that we're pulling the wool over their eyes."

Tldr hard drives changed their size due to pure corporate greed, nothing else.

[LAwLz]

This goes back to what @TheProfosist and myself are saying; unless gigabyte and gibibyte are clearly defined to the general audience, which it is not, the change you are asking for will simply not happen.

 

Let me ask you one question: have you tried to explain to the general audience what the different standards are? It is not fun, especially when two professionals would tell two opposing definitions.

But they are already clearly defined. The reason why we have these problems is because someone one day thought "I'll take this preexisting standard and change it!". Imagine if Coca Cola and other soda makers changed the size of their 33cl cans to containing only 20cl, but they kept calling it 33cl. When someone confronts them they just go "well customers are used to 33cl on a soft drink actually meaning 20cl so changing it would just cause confusion".

 

The confusion is only there because OS makers didn't follow the SI units to begin with. Changing the OS to either report in actual KB (as in, kilo meaning 1000 and not 1024) or simply adding a small i in between wouldn't cause more confusion (assuming everyone did it) and we would finally have our OSes actually report how much space we actually have because right now it is inaccurate.

I think Ubuntu actually reports it with the correct prefix.

 

 

 

The next point is the mb mib nonsense. The only reason hard drive manufacturers changed to 1b bytes is 1tb or whatever junk they're using was to save millions and millions of dollars while giving customers less and getting away with it. It has literally nothing to do with any kind of SI standard. Drives used to be measured in base two like everything else in a computer, since computers operate in base two. But someone at the hard drive companies had a great idea, they said "what if we switch to base 10 and misdirect people into thinking it was due to wanting to adhere to SI numbering standards? It'll be great, we'll earn way more money, and people with fight about it, completely ignoring that we're pulling the wool over their eyes."

Tldr hard drives changed their size due to pure corporate greed, nothing else.

I don't know about storage manufacturers but in networking kilo has always meant 1000. 1 Mb/s is 1000kb/s. It has always been, and hopefully always will be.

So no, not everything related to computers use base 2 for measurements. I am not even saying it's wrong to use base 2 for measuring things. All I am saying is that if you want to use base 2 then use the correct prefix. Don't just steal an already existing prefix and change the definition of it. It was destined to cause confusion as soon as someone came up with that stupid idea.

Kilo means 1000. Kibi means 1024.

Don't use kilo when you mean kibi and don't use kibi when you mean kilo. How hard can it be to follow that simple logic?

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

But they are already clearly defined. The reason why we have these problems is because someone one day thought "I'll take this preexisting standard and change it!". Imagine if Coca Cola and other soda makers changed the size of their 33cl cans to containing only 20cl, but they kept calling it 33cl. When someone confronts them they just go "well customers are used to 33cl on a soft drink actually meaning 20cl so changing it would just cause confusion".

 

The confusion is only there because OS makers didn't follow the SI units to begin with. Changing the OS to either report in actual KB (as in, kilo meaning 1000 and not 1024) or simply adding a small i in between wouldn't cause more confusion (assuming everyone did it) and we would finally have our OSes actually report how much space we actually have because right now it is inaccurate.

 

I think Ubuntu actually reports it with the correct prefix.

 

Let me reiterate my point, important part in bold red:

  

This goes back to what @TheProfosist and myself are saying; unless gigabyte and gibibyte are clearly defined to the general audience, which it is not, the change you are asking for will simply not happen.

 

Let me ask you one question: have you tried to explain to the general audience what the different standards are? It is not fun, especially when two professionals would tell two opposing definitions.

The main point of the issue is the general audience. The point of an operating system is to cater to as wide of a user-base as possible. That means you are going to deal with the tech-illiterate majority. With the majority, the mibibyte, gibibyte concept is simply not in their dictionary. Explaining to them that 1GB=1000MB and 1GiB=1024MiB is not as easy as you are making it sound.

 

Another point I need to repeat here is that there are people, very deep in the professional world, that legitimately believe that 1GB=1024MB and 1GiB=1000MiB. That does not make the issue really easy either. About everybody is familiar with base 10 (our natural counting system; we have ten fingers), but base 2 is alien to most.

[Jimbillroo Digital]

.

[Yoinkerman]

No one was ever confused about the sizes before.  Absolutely no one.  I was there.

 

Again, it's not about SI, it was never about SI.  SI is a misdirection.  It's about drive manufacturers, because in 1990(ish), networking was its own thing.  We barely had 10mbit networking.  And the networking part caused confusion because sometimes people thought 10mbit meant 10mbyte because they were both 10mb(mB, MB, Mb).  

 

It was about practiced industry standards.  Hard drive makers changed the accepted definitions of storage(remember, mibi or mebi or kibi didn't exist) and charged the same amount of money for less addressable space in windows.(because lets face it, windows had like 90% market share).

 

If <insert your favourite food vendor> changed your <favourite food item> to give you less product, while charging you the same amount, it makes sense people wouldn't like it.  If then they claimed it was for a different reason, like the price of tea in china decreased, while they laugh all the way to the bank, it's probably not true.

[LAwLz]

Let me reiterate my point, important part in bold red:

The main point of the issue is the general audience. The point of an operating system is to cater to as wide of a user-base as possible. That means you are going to deal with the tech-illiterate majority. With the majority, the mibibyte, gibibyte concept is simply not in their dictionary. Explaining to them that 1GB=1000MB and 1GiB=1024MiB is not as easy as you are making it sound.

 

Another point I need to repeat here is that there are people, very deep in the professional world, that legitimately believe that 1GB=1024MB and 1GiB=1000MiB. That does not make the issue really easy either. About everybody is familiar with base 10 (our natural counting system; we have ten fingers), but base 2 is alien to most.

The general audience is confused because of the OS using SI prefixes incorrectly. They are confused because Windows says GB when it means GiB. The HDD and networking people are labeling things correctly, the OS guys are labeling things incorrectly, and people just assume the HDD and network people are screwing them over (because you obviously want as much as possible for your money).

 

You don't have to explain anything to them other than "GB and GiB are not the same thing". They are confused today because both the HDD and OS calls it GB when the OS actually means GiB. They see the same wording on two different places being used differently, and get confused. If they saw two different labels it would be far easier to explain that they are different things. Having GB mean two different things is much harder to explain than explaining that GB and GiB means two different things. It's completely illogical to assume that just adding an i in Windows would make it harder to understand.

 

Yes, base 2 is alien to most. That's exactly why we shouldn't use base 10 prefixes to label base 2 measurements. It messes with peoples' heads because they expect base 10 when they see prefixes they are used to. Again, it is the stupid decision to label KiB as just KB that caused all this confusion. If they had just used the correct prefixes to begin with we wouldn't have any of this confusion today.

 

Any argument about sticking to what we use right now for convenience is just an argumentum ad antiquitatem.

Facts are facts. People are confused today, they were confused decades ago, OS makers are misusing SI prefixes and companies (pretty much all storage companies) are have gotten sued for following very very old standards.

 

People would probably be confused if we changed to KiB in OSes as well, but at the very least we would fix two of the previously mentioned issues. I don't see how this would cause any more confusion than what we already have either so there would be no drawback.

 

 

 

No one was ever confused about the sizes before.  Absolutely no one.  I was there.

Please define "before". Back when HDD manufacturers also misused the Si prefixes? Well of course they weren't confused. Both the OS and storage makers were misusing terms but at least it was consistent. It is the inconsistency that causes confusion. Storage manufacturers are using the correct terminology and OS makers do not. Don't blame the ones following standards. Blame the ones not following them.

 

 

Again, it's not about SI, it was never about SI.  SI is a misdirection.  It's about drive manufacturers, because in 1990(ish), networking was its own thing.  We barely had 10mbit networking.  And the networking part caused confusion because sometimes people thought 10mbit meant 10mbyte because they were both 10mb(mB, MB, Mb). 

Bull. Shit.

The Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) standard was released in 1995. Even old vampire cables could do 10Mbps and that was back in what, the 70's?

Even if that was true (that 10Mb barely existed) you can't argue that you didn't have 1Kbps or more. You can't even say networking was "it's own thing" because back then because we already had the Internet, and before that we had telephone networks (which used computers).

Bit and bytes are not relevant in the conversation about companies that makes OSes being stupid and misusing SI prefixes.

 

 

It was about practiced industry standards.  Hard drive makers changed the accepted definitions of storage(remember, mibi or mebi or kibi didn't exist) and charged the same amount of money for less addressable space in windows.(because lets face it, windows had like 90% market share).

But the "accepted definition" was wrong. Hard drive manufacturers changed from misusing measurements to using them correctly.

 

 

If <insert your favourite food vendor> changed your <favourite food item> to give you less product, while charging you the same amount, it makes sense people wouldn't like it.  If then they claimed it was for a different reason, like the price of tea in china decreased, while they laugh all the way to the bank, it's probably not true.

If they claimed it was because their old packaging used to say it contained 20cl when it actually contained 33cl, and now they changed the packaging to actually contain 20cl like the label says, then I would be okay with it.

When I look at the label I want to know how much is in the package. If the label is wrong then that's a bad thing. You shouldn't be mad at the manufacturer for correcting a factual error.

[Yoinkerman]

No.  They literally started making smaller drives, charging the same amount of money, and made up their own labeling that happened to match official prefixes.  Before, computers did not use official prefixes.

 

It wasn't purely a labeling change.   They physically made drives smaller.  Reducing their costs by untold zillions of dollars over time.  

 

There were no official prefixes for computers at this time.  There were established industry practices since the beginning of computers.  From the beginning of time, computers were measured in MiB.  Except it wasn't called MiB.  one KB was 2^10, one MB was 2^20, etc.  Computers used similar prefixes, but they were not using the SI standard.  They only used the same name.  And no one was confused.

 

Official prefixes only came out in the mid to late 90s, after hard drive makers had already changed the industry standard used since the beginning of time.

[TheProfosist]

But they are already clearly defined. The reason why we have these problems is because someone one day thought "I'll take this preexisting standard and change it!". Imagine if Coca Cola and other soda makers changed the size of their 33cl cans to containing only 20cl, but they kept calling it 33cl. When someone confronts them they just go "well customers are used to 33cl on a soft drink actually meaning 20cl so changing it would just cause confusion".

 

The confusion is only there because OS makers didn't follow the SI units to begin with. Changing the OS to either report in actual KB (as in, kilo meaning 1000 and not 1024) or simply adding a small i in between wouldn't cause more confusion (assuming everyone did it) and we would finally have our OSes actually report how much space we actually have because right now it is inaccurate.

I think Ubuntu actually reports it with the correct prefix.

 

 

 

I don't know about storage manufacturers but in networking kilo has always meant 1000. 1 Mb/s is 1000kb/s. It has always been, and hopefully always will be.

So no, not everything related to computers use base 2 for measurements. I am not even saying it's wrong to use base 2 for measuring things. All I am saying is that if you want to use base 2 then use the correct prefix. Don't just steal an already existing prefix and change the definition of it. It was destined to cause confusion as soon as someone came up with that stupid idea.

Kilo means 1000. Kibi means 1024.

Don't use kilo when you mean kibi and don't use kibi when you mean kilo. How hard can it be to follow that simple logic?

Thing is storage in in base 2 and its always been that way so why when selling storage are they suddenly using base 10? Thats the part that is stupid. A product should not be sold one way and the recognized by a computer in another. Even if the OS started using GiB and what not it wouldnt matter because its still 1024 when the drives are GB and 1000. That right there is the issue not the naming.

thing is your actually wrong there because networking is done in bits most times not byes so the whole kilo vs kibi thing applies a bit differently. one byte its two bits thus if you go by the bit you can use base 10. That is also another thing. Why is networking done in bits when all data and storage is done in bytes. everything should be using one common thing preferably base 2 for computers.

1KB = 8Kb, 1MB = 8Mb, etc. here is a good calculator that I use. http://goo.gl/8zeb1z

 

It just seems to me that Apple had this coming. You can not be putting storage capacities on your website that doesn't reflect the available space on the device when it ships to you and because Apple does not allow you to expand the storage on their devices out of the box you literally have no clue how much available storage you will have. It's understandable if software updates take up memory, but right out of the box, their should be the exact amount of space available on the device as stated on the website.

This is that updates to the OS change the amount of storage that the OS consumes so even if they quoted available space that doesnt mean it would be correct either. And yes a newer device will ship with more updates than a older one so presumably less storage. You can have a clue how much you have but this is what doing additional research. It is also what reviews are for.

[LAwLz]

There were no official prefixes for computers at this time.  There were established industry practices since the beginning of computers.  From the beginning of time, computers were measured in MiB.  Except it wasn't called MiB.  one KB was 2^10, one MB was 2^20, etc.  Computers used similar prefixes, but they were not using the SI standard.  They only used the same name.  And no one was confused.

 

Official prefixes only came out in the mid to late 90s, after hard drive makers had already changed the industry standard used since the beginning of time.

Again, you don't just take an already existing standard (yes, SI existed back when hard drives were starting to be made) and then change the definition. If I have to make up a new length measurement it would be completely idiotic of me to name it "meter" when one of my meters is 102,4 centimeters. Maybe I should call it something else, don't you agree?

Again, kilo means 1000. memory, storage and OS makers fucked up in the beginning. Storage manufacturers changed and now you're pissed at them for using the correct definition. No matter what you say, you will always be wrong about kilo meaning anything other than 1000. Just because a lot of people misuse a term doesn't mean it is all of a sudden correct. Just because a lot of people mix up you're and your doesn't mean you're definition becomes correct.

 

 

 

Thing is storage in in base 2 and its always been that way so why when selling storage are they suddenly using base 10? Thats the part that is stupid. A product should not be sold one way and the recognized by a computer in another. Even if the OS started using GiB and what not it wouldnt matter because its still 1024 when the drives are GB and 1000. That right there is the issue not the naming.

I don't have anything against storage in base 2. If that's what you think I am arguing about then you have completely missed my point. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with Windows or other OSes reporting storage in base 2. Zero, none, 0.

What I have a problem with is that they are using a prefix that means 1000 to label things as 1024, especially now that we have a prefix that means 1024. That is my issue.

I completely agree that a product shouldn't be sold one way and recognized in another way, but that is exactly what is happening right now when storage manufacturers follows a standard and OS developers using their own made up measurement. I shouldn't even say "OS developers" because at this point it's basically just Microsoft doing it (not sure about Google). Ubuntu correctly labels it as GiB and OS X/iOS actually uses base 10.

 

thing is your actually wrong there because networking is done in bits most times not byes so the whole kilo vs kibi thing applies a bit differently. one byte its two bits thus if you go by the bit you can use base 10. That is also another thing. Why is networking done in bits when all data and storage is done in bytes. everything should be using one common thing preferably base 2 for computers.

1KB = 8Kb, 1MB = 8Mb, etc. here is a good calculator that I use. http://goo.gl/8zeb1z

Wow I had no idea that a bit and a byte were different things. Thanks for the help! *heavy sarcasm*

The thing about prefixes is that it doesn't matter what you attach them to, they still mean the same thing. a kilo always means thousand no matter if it's a kilobit, or kilobyte, or kilowatt. It applies exactly the same no matter what. So no, I am not wrong.

 

I don't know why we use bits for networking but bytes in other stuff, but I have some guesses.

 

A byte is 8 bits because we needed 7 bits to be able to do character encoding with upper/lower case letters, different punctuation, numbers etc. With 6 bits there weren't enough unique combinations to include everything. We needed at least 7 bits for each character. The reason why it's 8 and not 7 was because they wanted something with the power of 2.

So 8 bytes ended up being the smallest memory that could be addressed in computers (because you can't address less than a single character).

Good thing they came up with a new name for this new measurement, right? Imagine if they had called the byte a bit. Wouldn't that have been really stupid? Almost as stupid as saying a kilobyte is 1024 bytes instead of just coming up with a new prefix for it...

 

In networking we don't have these limitations so why not just measure stuff in the smallest possible measurement (which is 1 bit)? Seems kind of silly to measure stuff in a byte when there are perfectly legitimate reasons to only send 1 bit. So basically, both are used because both are the smallest usable amount of usable space. At least that's what I think is the reason.

 

 

And yes I agree with you that for computers stuff should be base 2. Again, I am not against that at all. What I am against is using base 10 prefixes for base 2 things.

[Sauron]

How would it even be against the law to deploy updates that someone arbitrarily describes as "too large"? I'm not a fan of apple but come on, this is not what they should be criticized for,...

[Yoinkerman]

It was never about the unit prefixes, that's the whole point!

 

Because if it was, we'd have 1.07tib drives!