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Apple Kicks HDD Marketing Debate Into High Gear
quacking duck writes "With the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple has updated a support document describing how their new operating system reports capacities of hard drives and other media. It has sided with hard drive makers, who for years have advertised capacities as '1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes' instead of the traditional computer science definition, and in so doing has kicked the debate between marketing and computer science into high gear. Binary prefixes for binary units (e.g. GiB for 'gibibyte') have been promoted by the International Electrotechnical Commission and endorsed by IEEE and other standards organizations, but to date there's been limited acceptance (though manufacturers have wholeheartedly accepted the 'new' definitions for GB and TB). Is Apple's move the first major step in forcing computer science to adopt the more awkward binary prefixes, breaking decades of accepted (if technically inaccurate) usage of SI prefixes?"
Is Apple's move the first major step in forcing computer science to adopt the more awkward binary prefixes, breaking decades of accepted (if technically inaccurate) usage of SI prefixes?
No, its not any first major step. HDD makers already went there years ago, its established and people know better what it means. And even if I'm quite a nerd myself, I never think that 1 terabytes = 1 048 576 megabytes. Yeah it would be great if I remembered that or as many decimals in PI as possible, but no one really cares. It's a lot easier to remember and think that 1 terabyte is 1 000 000 megabytes, even if its not technically so because of binary system and even if I know that - I still think so just for the easy of it.
And its a mac. What did you think? It's as far from a nerdy computer as possible. Obviously they are going to use terms and units that non-geeky people understand.
snow leopard frees 7gigs? Because it can't do the math? #8^)
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
And people who manufacture things for people should adhere to that standard. Computers are the means, not the end.
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
The SI prefixes have been around for nearly 5 decades, and have a specific meaning used by everybody. Every scientist uses them in one way or another, and for every last one of of them, they have the same meaning.
Why can't we, the C.S. people, accept that?
Giga is 10^9. It has been 10^9 since it was created. It was never, ever meant to be anything but 10^9.
If you want to talk about 1024^3, then it's Gibi. Gibi is 2^30 since it was created. It was never, ever meant to be anything but 2^30.
Get over it.
(and yes, I try to always use GiB whenever it's appropriate).
For things where there's a clear "address bus" that consists of all possible permutations of a binary bit field, it makes sense to use the powers of two. The 2^10 kilo-, 2^20- mega, 2^30 giga- is just a convenience in terminology due to their approximate equivalence to 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, respectively; however, the bigger you go, obviously they diverge quite a bit.
For things addressed by a system of arbitrary track/cylinder numbers, say, 336 tracks or 1435 tracks, and arbitrary platter/head numbers, it's ridiculous to say that they should follow the "convenience" of the powers of two scheme.
So, how should flash drives be measured and marketed? While the components are physically based on an address bus, they present themselves to the host with sector numbers just like the spinning drives do. They can also reserve some "spare" cells in their internal mapping, for wear-leveling or error correction. I'd say they could easily make the case for marketing under SI/IEEE powers of ten.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541
These IEEE recomendations seam like common sense to me.
1 KB = 1,000 bytes
1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes
1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
And for you droids and androids out there:
1 KiB = 1,024 bytes
1 MiB = 1,048,576 bytes
1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes
This mean the downloads will seem faster on a Mac. What about benchmarks? Does this mean we are going to see tons of amateur reviews with inaccurate results? I hope Apple gives us a way to switch back to GiB mode in any case.
For 1KB the difference is 24 bytes.
For 1MB, 2**20 - 10**6 = 48576, 48KB difference or 4.6% less than the larger of the two.
For 1GB, 2**30 - 10**9 = 73741824 (73MB), 6.9%.
For a 1TB hard disk you're being short-changed by 9%: 94 gigabytes!
You want to accept inconsistancies within your own field (MHz, GHz, MB etc.) rather than havng to change things. Because it's not as if anything ever changes with computers. Some parts of computers use base 2, others do not, there has been a definitive set of standards since 1999, getting MS on board would pretty much solve the problem as that is what people would then see their computer tell them.
Kilo = 1<<10
Mega = 1<<20
Giga = 1<<30
Tera = 1<<40
Goes by ten!
As much as techies complain about people using technical terms inaccurately, we should use the SI prefixes in ways that mean what they mean. The fact that 2^10 is close to 1000 doesn't mean we get to hijack K/M/G to mean 2^10/2^20/2^30.
And mentally we're using them to mean powers of 1000 anyway. How often do you _really_ mean 1024 when you say 1K? Personally, I'm always thinking 1000-ish.
I'm happy Apple is doing this. The use of SI unit names for base 2 values was convenient and gave relatively small errors for low numbers. But up above a gigabyte, and certainly in the terabyte range it's just plain wrong. And certainly nobody who's not a CS person is going to think "Oh, yeah, I divide the base 10 exponent by 3 and multiply by 10 to get the base 2 exponent because this is a piece of computer equipment!".
The binary SI prefixes aren't that hard to use when they really make sense. Computer science should get with the rest of the world in how things are measured and quanitifed and stop doing so with its own special language understood by those well versed in the field unless that language uses words and terms clearly different from the standard ones.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Yeah, but the alternative Mebi and Gibi sounds like something out yaoi. So I'd rather stick with 1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Seriously? These sound like next generation Valley Girl names, not self-respecting geek prefixes.
When using prefixes that end in 'a' or 'o', I feel macho. Megabyes! Teraflops! Yottapwnage! Yeah, baby!
From my cold, dead hands, Apple.
BTW, who thought of the cutsey name "Apple" anyway? Nice name. Pfft.
Binary prefixes for binary units (e.g. GiB for 'gibibyte') have been promoted by the International Electrotechnical Commission and endorsed by IEEE and other standards organizations, but to date there's been limited acceptance
Nobody's going to use an annoyingly cutesy word like "gibibyte", which seems just as silly now as it did ten years ago. Using the abbreviated prefixes might be a good idea, though.
Just for reference (since some people are freaking out about how much space they're "losing") here's the percentage difference between the SI and binary sizes:
Kilobyte: 2.3%
Megabyte: 4.6%
Gigabyte: 6.9%
Terabyte: 9.1%
Petabyte: 11.2%
Exabyte: 13.3%
So for the foreseeable future your hard drive will be about 10% smaller than advertised. Not a big deal, IMHO (it's not like you're paying for the missing bits), but still worth pointing out.
Visit the
The "standard"? All of the standards associations recommend using G/M/K as prefixes with the base-10 meanings, and using the unambiguous Gi/Mi/Ki (gibi/mebi/kibi) for base-2 measurements. One standards organization was willing to allow the deprecated use of G/M/K as base-2 for measuring semiconductor memory (i.e., RAM) only.
Do you also recommend that we will suddenly measure disk drive capacity in a different unit if/when we all move to using quantum computers or computers based on some other new currently unfamiliar technology?
Oh, and BTW, at least one of the technologies which has a small chance of replacing current RAM technologies, phase-change memory, could theoretically store 3 or 5 states per unit cell instead of 2 or 4, given the right material undergoing the phase change. One of the reasons not to do it is because it would be a pain to convert to and from base-2 to interface with the computer, so in the long run it is possible (but not necessarily likely, because there is a large initial development cost) that some computing devices will be designed to work in base-3 or base-5 if only to better utilize the abilities of PCM.
...then all the English speaking countries should switch to metric according to your logic..
Actually, according to this, the US is one of three backwards countries that are not using the metric system.
According to the US CIA World Factbook in 2006, the International System of Units is the official system of measurement for all nations except for Burma, Liberia, and the United States.
I hate our system and I use metric on my own. My car is all metric. I just have to go back to the old system when communicating with others.
The negative terminal of a battery supplies the electrons and they move from negative to positive when a conductor is placed between the two poles. The two popular notations for charge flow, "Conventional Flow Notation" and "Electron Flow Notation", do not dispute this. The difference is that "Electron Flow Notation" illustrates the physical movement of electrons (from "negative" to "positive") and "Conventional Flow Notation" illustrates the "movement" of the electrical charge from the "positive" terminal to the "negative" terminal. As electrons move from - to +, the "positive" side of the battery becomes less positive in relation to the "negative" side, effectively meaning that the electrical charge is moving from + to - (in "Conventional Flow Notation"). The electrons are still moving from the - battery terminal to the + battery terminal, though.
"This is a case of marketing trumping computer science."
No, this is a case of standards trumping common (mis)usage. Metric prefixes have been in use for centuries, and they are powers of ten. That's how the national and international standards have ALWAYS used them.
Those prefixes are convenient, and have been used for powers of two in casual, informal usage. But powers of two were never part of any official standard until recently, when NEW and DIFFERENT prefixes were added.
Scientists and engineers have always used powers of ten. Manufacturers used to be careful to distinguish between the formal definition (powers of ten) and the casual usage (powers of two). For example, Intel lists the exact number of bytes in parentheses whenever they use the casual meaning of the prefixes, showing that they were aware of the potential for confusion.
But many reporters and hobbyists were not trained in engineering or science, and missed the distinction. So you ended up with what I think of as "AOL prefixes". Microsoft ignored the standards, as they so often do. They may have been confused by earlier systems, such as UNIX and RT-11, which reported space in numbers of disk blocks, rather than bytes. In early UNIX, the ls command lists the number of bytes without prefixes, and the du and df commands list the number of disk blocks, not the number of bytes.
I don't expect hobbyists or journalists to get the prefixes right. I can live with the misuse of the prefixes. But it really bothers me when someone complains when the prefixes are used correctly, in compliance to published international standards.
If you right click a file in Windows and go to Properties you see:
Size: 2.47 KB (2,539 bytes)
Size on disk: 4.00 KB (4,096 bytes)
I thought Mac OS X was supposed to be easy?
Mac OS X does this as well.
... ergo, they are mac users.
The problem is that mac users don't know how to use a computer
Uh.. the inch is technically an SI unit. It is defined as exactly 2.54 cm.
No, it's not. SI uses the metre for length measurement, and nothing else. You can alter it with the various prefixes, and there's is only one thousand meters in a kilometre, not twenty-four more.
The "inch" from the United States customary units is defined as 2.54 centimetres, but it doesn't make it part of the SI..
I've got bad news for you... while your drives no longer appear 10% smaller, all your files are now 10% larger.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Call me biased. Even call me bigoted, but I will stand by this assertion: American, UK, Oz, and Kiwi scientists and engineers, who have grown up around TWO systems of measurement, Imperial and Metric, are far more adept at scale conversion and at thinking in arbitrary units than European scientists who have been coddled into laziness and complacency because they only have one.
I'm not too sure where you are getting your information there. All of the countries, apart from the USA, that you mention are metric countries for just about everything, especially Australia and New Zealand. I've lived with people from Oz and NZ and most of them have no concept of any imperial measurement.
The UK and Ireland (I'm Irish) are slightly different. Most people would have grown up with metric and imperial measurements. The older the person the more imperial units they would have grown up with.
In Ireland just about all measurements in daily use are in the metric system now. Diesel and petrol are sold by the litre, speed limits and distances are in km (changed over from miles in 2005). The only things that are commonly referred to in imperial units are a pint of beer or a pound of butter (454 g on the label) and people's height and weight. Height and weight is usually refereed to in feet and stone (strangely enough very few people know their weight in pounds). The only notable difference between Ireland and the UK in this regard would be that the UK still uses miles on road signs.
With regards to scientists and engineers, no scientist or engineer in any of those countries (apart from the US maybe), would use imperial units (unless for a very specific or unusual purpose). The very idea of using any imperial units would be laughed out of the room so there is no conversion going on. Where there are two units of measurement being used side by side (example of height and weight in the UK and Ireland) they tend to be used independently. For example most people I know in Ireland would tell you their weight and height in stone and feet respectively, but not that many would be able to tell you their weight and height in kg and metres (though more people would know their weight in kg) even though they now use kg and metres for everything else.
As to your comments on European scientists and engineers it would seem to reinforce the first two sentences of your post.
The advantage of the SI system is not in a single measurement like metres or kg but the fact that they all integrate together with grace and simplicity and most importantly consistently. You say we would be better off with more people having an ability to reason fluently in both systems but you give no good reason why this would be so.
Personally I can see no advantage to an engineer working in two units consecutively, in fact I can only see problems. The potential for miscommunication, errors in assumptions and just plain awkwardness would be very high indeed.
Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. G.B Shaw