16 GB Capacity says 14 GB?

I don't understand why people don't complain that their advertised 750 GB SSD in their MacBook shows a capacity of 750 GB in the OS and why are the units used in advertising the same units used in the OS. (1000 = 1 KB)

We really should be complaining when these things make sense.

Not in the case here where Capacity doesn't mean capacity and the unit GB is different (1000 Bytes = 1 KiloByte vs 1024 = 1 KiloByte) on the outside of the box vs inside the OS (iOS).

Two terms = four definitions: why should this be a problem?

I did just notice when this question was originally asked, the version of Mac OS X (10.5) did not have consistency with the GB term. In MacOS Capacity as always had the same meaning, i.e. total capacity of the storage device; not, Total capacity less some unknown quantity of system software. I guess the past 6 years of this thread have not been enough time to catch up to MacOS as far as capacity reporting.

kevinkendall wrote:

Lawrence Finch wrote:

2nd time he's made the same redundant post to an old thread.

Actually, I think they did the same thing in about four threads.

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Yep, to both of ya. Is that a real big frikkin problem or something??

Chill out man....... gawd....... Find something important to make scathing comments about.....

KK

I think scathing doesn't mean what you think it does.

markfromlandolakes wrote:

I don't understand why people don't complain that their advertised 750 GB SSD in their MacBook shows a capacity of 750 GB in the OS and why are the units used in advertising the same units used in the OS. (1000 = 1 KB)

We really should be complaining when these things make sense.

Not in the case here where Capacity doesn't mean capacity and the unit GB is different (1000 Bytes = 1 KiloByte vs 1024 = 1 KiloByte) on the outside of the box vs inside the OS (iOS).

Two terms = four definitions: why should this be a problem?

Just as there are multiple ways of estimating length, mass or any other physical measure, there are multiple ways of estimating computer storage capacity. Some software reports its estimates in base 2, some in base 10, and some even in truly silly things like "mp3" file equivalents. We don't have universal consistentacy in how we report estimates of almost anything, so why would anyone expect there would be such a thing in computer mass storage capacity?

A Universal nomenclature system does exist, btw, but almost nobody uses it. We should be reporting capacity in Gibibytes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte), which is part of an IEC system of specifically binary prefixes for capacity.

Well they managed it with MacOS since 10.6. Why did they make the change with OS X 10.6 to standardize to 1000³ units? When the same company is referring to the same product the same definition should be used.

markfromlandolakes wrote:

Well they managed it with MacOS since 10.6. Why did they make the change with OS X 10.6 to standardize to 1000³ units? When the same company is referring to the same product the same definition should be used.

OS X and iOS have completely different development groups, and apparently they do things differently. You can submit feedback to Apple if you'd like them to change that.