Really? Just 72.5% of the advertised space? At least my MacBook has 499 GB out of an advertised 512 GB (97.5%)...
iPhone 5s, iOS 9.3.1
The Operating system takes up several GB of space. On your iPhone, it's about 3GB. On your Mac, it's about 10GB. This is not something new.
Well new is the concept in terms of general computing devices of any kind I've ever used is the idea that the operating system is not even part of the "space" or the "used space." On a Mac you see all the space and how much used whether it's apps, OS or whatever and you can remove a lot of the bloat.
Apparently with iOS 9.3 the bloat is now a whopping 4.4 GB and you can't opt out of any of any of it? Pretty absurd for a mobile phone OS.
The only way the OS cannot be part of the space used is if it is stored within firmware (it isn't on a mac) or on a different storage device (possible if you have a fusion drive). You also "lose" some space because of the difference in how drive/storage manufacturers measure space available and the way the OS addresses that space. If you have experience with computers a quick Google search will bring you a detailed explanation.
Comparing disc space usage on an iOS device and an OS X device is somewhat pointless, IMO. On my Mac, I can partition the drive, completely erase it and install a wholly different operating system, file system and so on. I can also replace the drive with a larger one if I choose to, or simple supplement the space it by simply plugging in an external drive, or even booting from an external drive. None of those things can be done with an iOS device. An iOS device and its storage and file system are a wholly different situation from mass storage on a desktop or laptop computer.
You don't need to be a amtehmatician here, add up the figures of used space and available space, it's less than 12 GB total. So unless your suggesting that a 16 GB iPhone doesn't mean a 16GB iPhone but rather a 12 GB iPhone with 4 GB of firmware for the iOS I don't get your point.
Just to make sure I am understanding this right, you're ok with your Mac missing 13GB of space due to an operating system, but not your phone missing 4GB due to an operating system? Percentages aren't significant in this situation, unless you want to compare a 128GB iPhone to a 128GB Mac. You upgraded the storage on your Mac, but not your iPhone.
The Mac is not missing 13GB due to th operating system, that's the well known false advertising explained away with "formatted space" fine print which has been the norm on every hard drive I know of accross the board since the 80s if not earlier.
The Mac loses 2.5% to this. The operating system is part of the used space shown, the total available space is what's available without the OS.
WIth the iPhone it isn't clear what's going on exactly only that you can use less than 75% of the space you supposedly purchased and that the most innocent explanation is that the OS is a whopping 4GB+ but in that case it's totally bizarre that the OS is not considered part of the "used space".
this is not to mention that 4+GB is absurdly large for a mobile phone OS when a full featured desktop/laptop OS is only 10-15.
This article explains:
How OS X and iOS report storage capacity - Apple Support
See especially the paragraph that starts: "The storage media in your Apple product, like all storage devices, uses some of its capacity for formatting ..."
First, your phone doesn't have 11.8 GB. It has 12.63 GB. The space reported on the phone is measured in base 2, where 1K = 1024 bytes. The phone's spec is in base 10. Or another way to look at it, in base 2, the displayed capacity of the phone is 14.95 GB. It's the same amount of space, just measured differently. Like 1 kilogram is 2.2 pounds. 1 KG is not less than 2.2 pounds, even though the number 1 is less than the number 2.2.
The difference in base 10 is 16 - 12.63, or 3.3 GB. Or, in base 2, as reported on the phone, the difference is 2.63 GB. But those 2 numbers, 3.3 and 2.63, are the same amount of storage measured in different units. Most of that is the operating system, built in apps and associated data; the remainder is the "disk" formatting, including the file map tables and the storage allocation table.
You cannot measure the difference as 16 GB - 11.8 GB, because the units for those numbers are not the same. You need to stay in the same system of measurements.
Whatever the case it seems pretty shameful that so little of the advertised storage is actually available to you.
As for all this "The space reported on the phone is measured in base 2, where 1K = 1024 bytes. The phone's spec is in base 10." why would they do such a purposefully confusing thing? How easy would it be to simply convert the figures the consumers see.
Because the HD capacity looks better if advertised 500 GB, instead of stating, that the actual usable space is only 488GB.
And is does not matter if you are buying an USB stick, HD external or built into the computer, it's all about marketing.
This might be interesting too, copied from this article
The numbers don't mean anything in themselves, as you don't think in terms of how you are going to fill it. The point in any measurement is comparison. All computers and computing devices, since the beginning of time, use the same measurement of total capacity before formatting and before the operating system is installed. So a 500 GB laptop will never have 500 GB available, but at least all of the dozens of laptops that have an advertised capacity can be compared with each other. Maybe the industry should have decided 80 years ago that capacity should be spec'd as available capacity rather than total capacity, but none ever has. And it would be very difficult to do, because the available capacity changes with every operating system update. So the specs would change every few months. You would have to republish all of your specs constantly.
That is what it is but why do they use a method of stating the storage capacity that is totally alien to everyone and dissimilar from laptops? Why not use what everybody knows and why, unlike a laptop, is the operating system usage hidden?
brsm1990 wrote:
That is what it is but why do they use a method of stating the storage capacity that is totally alien to everyone and dissimilar from laptops? Why not use what everybody knows and why, unlike a laptop, is the operating system usage hidden?
You're never going to get a satisfactory explanation to that. BTW, almost nobody actually uses the truly standard and proper terms for base 2 storage - http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
And you should be talking about gibibytes of storage. Also note that different tools, even on the same operating system, will often have some difference in how they compute estimated capacity. Also different file systems on the same device will affect how tools report estimated capacity (E.g. Android and iOS on the exact same storage card will affect somewhat the capacity that gets reported as their file systems are different).
The crux of it is that smart phones, laptops, desktops are binary (base 2) computational engines. But the vast majority of users have no grasp of that fact, and that includes marketing executives.
Actually Lawrence Finch did give an answer to that.
So the "16 GB" iPhone 5S has now shrunken to just 11.8 GB?
