A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/22/a-look-at-wwdc-2009-build-of-snow-leopard/)

World of Apple (http://news.worldofapple.com/archives/2009/06/19/a-look-at-wwdc-2009-build-of-mac-os-x-snow-leopard/) recently posted a look at the build of Snow Leopard (10A380) provided to developers at WWDC 2009. Despite being described as "near final", the build did not contain all the features that were demonstrated in the WWDC keynote such as the Dock Exposé. As a result, most of the changes found were rather minor.

Some of the changes detailed include:

- Snow Leopard now counts data sizes in base 10. In the example shown a 320GB hard drive shows as 320GB as opposed to 297GB
- Your timezone can be determined automatically
- System-wide spelling correction

The final version of Snow Leopard will be released in September 2009.

Article Link: A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/22/a-look-at-wwdc-2009-build-of-snow-leopard/)

[messedkid]

I'm so looking forward to this release!!

Can't wait to dual boot SL and W7 on my soon to come 13" MBP. :D

[emt1]

The base 10 sizes thing will be a little weird at first. I think I'll grow to like it.

[yg17]

I hope there's a way to change it to base 2, that's how it's supposed to be

[X5-452]

Doesn't counting in base 10 go against what's actually there? Wouldn't that artificially inflate storage size?

[Schtumple]

Ahhhh can't wait for Snow Leopard, it's definitely going to be good release.

X5-452: It doesn't inflate it, it just counts it differently, so when you buy a 250GB hard drive from PC World, you are actually going to get 250GB... instead of it showing up at 225 or whatever it would say.

It's a step in the simpler direction.

[intel]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

[ju5tin81]

Does that mean the upgrade from Leopard really only frees up 5.8 GBs of space rather than 6?
:cool:

[Roller]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

[Ivan P]

The base 10 thing is because Apple got sick of all the "why have I lost HD space??!!!" topics on MR :cool:

[miket019]

snow leopard, can't wait

[Oirectine]

Does the change to base 10 give any sort of benefit? I don't understand why they changed that. I mean I know the hard drive manufacturers do it, but their reason is to make their hard drives look as big as possible.

[backdraft]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

What don't you like about the Finder versus Windows Explorer?

[xraydoc]

I hope this is optional! But, knowing Apple, it will not be.

What kind of confusion will a non-geek experience when a Windows user sends a Mac user a 300MB file that suddenly balloons in size? I can think of a thousand ways this will do nothing but confuse people - especially those that live in a cross platform world.

Unless Apple can get Redmond to do the same thing, this will further add to the confusion between Mac and Windows users.

[Machinima]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

Developers aren't allowed to say too much, however the current build of Snow Leopard doesn't even support many current Leopard apps, such as Little Snitch, and basically no PPC apps, however PPC support is an install option, which means Apple is either actively blocking older apps from working, or they aren't going to work in the final release, basically someones going to have to remake them.

[AET10]

- Your timezone can be determined automatically


Oh goodie! I've been waiting YEARS for this feature!

[syklee26]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

[Tygernoot]

I agree, using base 10 doesn't make any sense at all. That HD manufacturers use base 10 instead of base 2 is bad enough already.

The only reason I can see Apple doing this, is to make it look like your (e.g.) 8GB iPhone actually has 8GB of space. Whenever you download a file it will look bigger on your HD than indicated because they multiply the size.

And if you want to write something on a 700MB CD, all of a sudden your 680MB file won't fit anymore or will apple also enlarge the CD size?

I don't know everything, so maybe I'm missing the point but I really don't agree with this and I'd like someone to explain me a single benefit (except for Apple making their HDs look bigger than they really are).

[MartiNZ]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

I guess people will use doxposé for different things - the example they showed in the keynote of dragging a file for attachment onto Mail in the dock and having its windows appear ... Windows has nothing near as useful as that in my experience. Dragging anything from explorer to anywhere is a pain, and the taskbar never ceases to fail at helping - the interface for that with Outlook just locks out the rest of the app, and dragging files to open in Excel or similar usually fails. I keep Notepad in the quick launch bar to open all sorts of files and even then just as often i'll end up with a shortcut to the document in the quick launch bar ... because I was really likely to want that.

[liv4Mac]

I remembered the early OS the thumb of rule was that you should always leave 10% of your your hard drive space Free. OSX automatically did that for you. Does that mean we have to use that thumb of rule?

[Hot Snowboarder]

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

How is it like that at all?
lol

[Schtumple]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

It's optional on install. Don't panic.

[ipedro]

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

Why would you want automatic transmission on a Ferrari? :eek:

[Machinima]

I remembered the early OS the thumb of rule was that you should always leave 10% of your your hard drive space Free. OSX automatically did that for you. Does that mean we have to use that thumb of rule?

That was for swap file space because computers a few decades ago didn't have enough RAM, however it hasn't been necessary on Windows or Mac for a long long time, however certain distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu still need it.

[Kelmon]

I don't suppose there is support for additional languages in Snow Leopard, as far as the system-wide dictionary is concerned, is there? I'm kinda fed up with Leopard (and previous releases) insisting that I spell using American English rather than British English.

[reverie]

If the automatic spelling "correction" is turned on by default (working like on the iPhone) Apple will bring pain and sorrow to millions of Mac users around the world. Their dictionaries in many languages are just ridiculous crap and on the iPhone many people spend more time correcting the dictionary then they would spend correcting their own mistakes. I wouldn't be surprised if soon some students are being told "Don't get a Mac, it's bad for word processing!" just for this feature alone.

[dukeseb]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

i just installed the WWDC beta..... ill offer some info on this.... the install is actually only an add on to the leopard install itself.... u donnt have to restart and run off the disc at all..... although u can if u like it does go a little faster

there is no archive and install or anything so if u want a fresh install u have to install leopard first then go over it with snow

when ur doing the install if u cusomize u can choose with or without rosetta..... i chose without and realise right quick that Office needs it...... but apple software update to the rescue.... when i opened word it told me i needed rosetta and the proceeded to download it for me

hope that helps

[Kelmon]

That was for swap file space because computers a few decades ago didn't have enough RAM, however it hasn't been necessary on Windows or Mac for a long long time, however certain distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu still need it.

You probably should also take into consideration the amount of RAM that you have in your Mac since the OS will need that much space in order to save your state when putting the computer to sleep, just in case you lose power (Deep Sleep, I think this state is called). I am not certain if this space is automatically reserved and you can certainly change a Preference somewhere to only maintain the data in RAM in RAM while the computer is asleep rather than writing it out to the hard drive.

Since I was without a battery for my MBP for almost a week, Deep Sleep was pretty invaluable, although I did forget to let it go to sleep fully before unplugging the power a couple of times (old habits die hard...).

[Baron58]

That was for swap file space because computers a few decades ago didn't have enough RAM, however it hasn't been necessary on Windows or Mac for a long long time, however certain distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu still need it.

That's just completely wrong all the way around.

[dukeseb]

Oh goodie! I've been waiting YEARS for this feature!

i tried timezone and it doesnt work..... it like its looking for a gps perhaps a
sign of things to come?

[horm]

it's kind of stupid to switch from base 2 to base 10. it actually IS base 2 and apple won't change that.

however, the fact that most users still think 1024 = 1000 may have driven apple to that step...

[attila]

Does the change to base 10 give any sort of benefit? I don't understand why they changed that. I mean I know the hard drive manufacturers do it, but their reason is to make their hard drives look as big as possible.

You know what they say about all Apple apps taking up less than 50% of file storage? That's because they count the bytes differentely ;)

[ojwk]

Why would you want automatic transmission on a Ferrari? :eek:

The Fezza in my garage has automatic transmission (paddle shifters).

Nah I'm just kidding, I don't have a garage..

[dukeseb]

its really funny that all u guys are freaking about this.... its really not that big a deal..... and itmay be the first step to getting other os's to do the same.... personally i look forward to my TB drives showing 1TB rather then 931MB

[Bryan605]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

R u serious?

1. Microsoft stole the dock idea in Windows 7 from MAC OSX/
2. Finder is soo much better the explore in Windows and the version in SL blows it away with the previews, quick look, search, even to the point that when u download a application it shows a status bar in finder under the icon.
3. Dock Expose will be nice and blows away MS Areo Peak function.
4. Windows has nothing that compares to Expose at all!!!!!
5. Lets not forget things windows does have: Apple Mail, Stacks, Spaces, Stability, Speed, No Viruses, refined OS, iPhoto, iMovie, and the list can go on.

[Shagrat]

I remembered the early OS the thumb of rule was that you should always leave 10% of your your hard drive space Free. OSX automatically did that for you. Does that mean we have to use that thumb of rule?


Err, the expression is "Rule of thumb" ... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb)

[MCS]

- System-wide spelling correction



I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere and I don't remember it being in Leopard but Snow Leopard automatically detects the language you are typing in. I type a lot in English and German and when I type in German it automatically switches to the German dictionary for spell checking.

[AidenShaw]

I hope there's a way to change it to base 2, that's how it's supposed to be

The standards bodies defined "Giga" to mean 10^9 a long time ago, and they're pushing the computer industry to stop misusing the term.

You did know that your 2 GHz CPU is 2,000,000,000 Hz, yes? And you did know that your Gigabit Ethernet was 1,000,000,000 bits per second, yes?

10^9 is "how it's supposed to be", calling 2^30 a "giga" is just wrong.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/11/08/i_say_petabyte_you_say/
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

[Cloudane]

Unless Apple can get Redmond to do the same thing, this will further add to the confusion between Mac and Windows users.

Should be no problem there... everything Apple does, Microsoft does a few years later :)

It'll be weird having everything count in base 10, but I suppose it's sensible enough. It's before my time, but I'm sure similar things were said for decimalisation and that all worked out simpler in the end.

RAM will be interesting, that would have to show up as 4.096GB for example? Unless they leave it in GiB.

[BulletMagnet]

I hope the usage of base 10 in storage capacity and file sizes will remove the confusion for end users. How many times have you been asked by an end-user "why is my 100GB drive actually only 97GB?"? Not so much these days because end-users just think "Oh, I've been duped by the computer people again!".

Hardware vendors are the only people that actually report the correct values as 1 Megabyte (MB) = 1 Million Bytes (B). The base 2 equivalent of 1,048,576 Bytes is actually more accurately known as a Mebibyte (MiB).

Oddly, Apple have used both forms in reporting hardware specs in base 10 and software reports in base 2.

Let's hope in time it will be less confusing for everyone.

[Mac21ND]

I'm thrilled for a great update at only $29. Probably like a lot of you, I spend around 10 hours or more per day in OS X. Anything that helps me be more productive is great.

[vandozza]

I don't suppose there is support for additional languages in Snow Leopard, as far as the system-wide dictionary is concerned, is there? I'm kinda fed up with Leopard (and previous releases) insisting that I spell using American English rather than British English.

Can't you just drag "British English" to being above "English" in the International System Preferences pane to fix this?

I use "Australian English" and don't notice the spell checker being incorrect for me...

http://img.skitch.com/20090622-e69uhife7r3gsk91sdt6m61aif.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/vandozza/bib1m/international)

[3247]

- Snow Leopard now counts data sizes in base 10. In the example shown a 320GB hard drive shows as 320GB as opposed to 297GBWow! Apple corrects a mistake it made 25 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_binary_prefixes#1984)!

[lamadude]

If the automatic spelling "correction" is turned on by default (working like on the iPhone) Apple will bring pain and sorrow to millions of Mac users around the world. Their dictionaries in many languages are just ridiculous crap and on the iPhone many people spend more time correcting the dictionary then they would spend correcting their own mistakes. I wouldn't be surprised if soon some students are being told "Don't get a Mac, it's bad for word processing!" just for this feature alone.

In my language (Dutch) the spell correction is actually very accurate. BUT what I hate is the fact that you can't easily switch languages, as if everybody only ever writes in one language. My Dutch spell correction is totally useless when writing this comment on MR for example.

For this reason alone I use Firefox and MS Word rather than Safari and Pages, since they allow easy switching of the language used in the spell correction, a feature that every program where you often need to type should have.

[Warbrain]

Base 10 will be a wonderful thing. It'll finally bring the issue of "Where did my HDD space go?" to an end. HDD manufacturers and OS developers have needed to get on the same page forever.

[LxMx]

R u serious?

1. Microsoft stole the dock idea in Windows 7 from MAC OSX/
2. Finder is soo much better the explore in Windows and the version in SL blows it away with the previews, quick look, search, even to the point that when u download a application it shows a status bar in finder under the icon.
3. Dock Expose will be nice and blows away MS Areo Peak function.
4. Windows has nothing that compares to Expose at all!!!!!
5. Lets not forget things windows does have: Apple Mail, Stacks, Spaces, Stability, Speed, No Viruses, refined OS, iPhoto, iMovie, and the list can go on.

That's all subjective my friend. Personally I use OS X on a MBA, I find it much better at doing things quickly with the limited space granted by a laptop than on Windows.

Having said that when it's time to sit down at home and start doing some research and word processing, for my purposes nothing quite beats Windows. Why? Well, I think a lot of the criticism with Windows is that it is very heavy visually. When you can sit down I find it a bit quicker to do focused work on a Windows machine, while OS X lends itself to a more diverse range of applications.

So, I think they both have advantages. OS X/Finder/Exposé busts Windows up pretty bad when it comes to fast, efficient multitasking over a wide range of apps. However the opposite is true when one is using only, say, a browser and word processor; the "monolithic" info heavy Windows GUI is a bit more efficient, at least for me.

Hence why I use OS X on the go and Windows at home.

Each to their own though.

[soup4you2]

Hurray for something thats finally not iPhone related!

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Why do I have this feeling that Apple is selling us a huge Beta-testprogram for just 29$?

This whole SnowLeopard thing feels so immature...

[capoeirista]

Hooray for system-wide spelling correction. I hope everyone can recognise what a good idea this is. Colour me excited.

Also, why is it 'English' and 'British English', rather than 'American English' and 'English'? Never got that one...

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

10^9 is "how it's supposed to be", calling 2^30 a "giga" is just wrong.


FULL ACK.

[lamadude]

I still prefer windows explorer over the finder. Just the lay-out with the folders in the left column and the sub folders and files in the right column makes it much easier for me to browse to a certain file, or move files around.
(apple fanboys will now probably mention that I'm not "supposed" to know where my files are or move them around and just let OSX decide that, but I don't like that)

[soLoredd]

What? An Apple product that doesn't contain the features that they said it would??

At this point I don't see how the hell Apple is going to sell the everyday user on upgrading. Developers? Fine. New users? You won't know the difference. But, everytime I read these preview articles, something is missing or taken out or is no longer going to be included.

Snow Leopard is quickly becoming a simple response to Windows 7 and the never-ending childish debate between Apple and Microsoft.

What next? Are we going to see Justin Long telling John Hodgman "I'm a Mac and my hard drive shows twenty more gigabytes than yours. Har har!!" :rolleyes:

[goosnarrggh]

it's kind of stupid to switch from base 2 to base 10. it actually IS base 2 and apple won't change that.

That's a man-made artificial distinction. As a matter of fact, sectors on a NAND Flash chip (for example) physically contain a (power-of-two + some overhead) number of bytes. For example, instead of 512 bytes (2^9), a typical NAND Flash sector (the smallest physically addressable and erasable space within the hardware structure) might contain 528 bytes. Of this space, filesystem formatting and error correction will take up some or all of these extra 16 bytes, leaving about 512 bytes available for data.

So you see, the power-of-two groupings are already quite arbitrarily chosen. In general, when you're talking about mass file storage, whether you choose to represent those bytes as being grouped together in base-2 sized clumps or base-10 sized clumps is not based on any physical reality. As long as the chosen definition is publicized clearly to the user, and deployed consistently within any given operating environment, I frankly don't care what definition they use.

(System RAM and NOR Flash, on the other hand, typically really does have a direct physical link to powers-of-two.)

[Consultant]

"Snow Leopard now counts data sizes in base 10. In the example shown a 320GB hard drive shows as 320GB as opposed to 297GB"

Haha uninformed fools win... At least there will be less "why is my HD only xyz size, can't find 10% of the size" threads.

[samr ali]

I'm looking forward to take advantage of your
And learn from your thoughts

[haravikk]

I don't like the difference to counting; hard-drive manufacturers should report the actual, base 2 (number system computers work in!) value for their drives, instead of falsely advertising a value you don't get. A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, anything else is a lie intended to make you believe you're getting more than you actually are.

It's not going to change the fact that block-sizes will be measured in base 2, and that files must therefore fit within these blocks, so why make this change? It's stupid IMO, and I'll turn it off if there's a way to.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

I'm looking forward to take advantage of your
And learn from your thoughts

Wow, are you the voice I constantly hear in my head?

[lamadude]

I don't think the base 10 thing will clear up any confusion at all, now every program that you download online will be bigger than announced on the website you got it from, and a 700 mb file won't fit a 700 mb cd anymore

[Detektiv-Pinky]

In my language (Dutch) the spell correction is actually very accurate. BUT what I hate is the fact that you can't easily switch languages, as if everybody only ever writes in one language. My Dutch spell correction is totally useless when writing this comment on MR for example.

For this reason alone I use Firefox and MS Word rather than Safari and Pages, since they allow easy switching of the language used in the spell correction, a feature that every program where you often need to type should have.

You have to set spelling to 'multilingual'. In this case OSX determines the language you are typing in and corrects it accordingly. Works amazingly well...

[Padaung]

Can't you just drag "British English" to being above "English" in the International System Preferences pane to fix this?

I use "Australian English" and don't notice the spell checker being incorrect for me...

http://img.skitch.com/20090622-e69uhife7r3gsk91sdt6m61aif.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/vandozza/bib1m/international)

Thank you for explaining that! I wish all computers were correctly set up for the region they are actually sold in. If only I could get MS Office to default to British English too now - despite constantly changing the setting, whenever I open the app it has reverted to US English.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

750gb hard-drives (striped)

You actually seem to use some yet unknown bit-based measuring for the capacity of your harddrive.

[Thiemo]

Why do I have this feeling that Apple is selling us a huge Beta-testprogram for just 29$?

This whole SnowLeopard thing feels so immature...

Well, you won't HAVE to buy it.

[FvL]

Snow Leopard will use 10-based counting. After a while, Microsoft will follow and then the confusion will hopefully slowly disappear.

Please don't say "but computers use base-2". People usually don't.

[AidenShaw]

RAM will be interesting, that would have to show up as 4.096GB for example? Unless they leave it in GiB.

4 GiB is 4.294967296 GB

[lamadude]

You have to set spelling to 'multilingual'. In this case OSX determines the language you are typing in and corrects it accordingly. Works amazingly well...

Thx, but where can I select this? I can't find it anywhere.

[vandozza]

If only I could get MS Office to default to British English too now - despite constantly changing the setting, whenever I open the app it has reverted to US English.

This can be fixed too... I fixed it somehow, but I can't remember how.

Try www.macosxhints.com

Edit - I think if you fix one problem, you fix the other as well. IE set the default language in the International System Preferences, and Word uses this as the default dictionary language (I think...)

Maybe relates to this article - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050204083233639&query=word%2Bdictionary%2Blanguage

[bdkennedy1]

I used it for a week on my iMac. File transfer speeds doubled on both my Mac Pro and iMac, including USB and Flash drives.

But I wouldn't describe it as "near final" I ran into a lot of bugs, and a handful of apps I use such as XLD, Max, Photoshop CS4 and Transmission didn't work correctly.

Since most shareware developers can't get their hands on a prerelease copy, it will be several months before they are able to update their applications.

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Well, you won't HAVE to buy it.

Well, I see it this way: If they really changed that much of the underlying code as they claim, there will be also a lot of bugs in the system. Which need to be ironed out through some heavy testing.
Has anybody actually seen and coded some of this OpenCL-magic?

I don't think that can be done completely behind doors - and Apple loves to keep stuff all to themselves until the last minute.

So I think the deal is the following: We (Apple) know it will be buggy. We keep on selling this anyway and it is you, the customer, who can test it for us. And please don't cry if anything breaks - we gave you such a good deal...

[dukeseb]

I don't like the difference to counting; hard-drive manufacturers should report the actual, base 2 (number system computers work in!) value for their drives, instead of falsely advertising a value you don't get.


yes lets do that and while were at it lets just break it down to the byte and wrap it around the box...... more numbers = less confusion

1,099,512,000,000

i would honestly laugh if i saw a drive on the shelf that said 931.7GB

[ibwb]

Snow Leopard will use 10-based counting. After a while, Microsoft will follow and then the confusion will hopefully slowly disappear.

Please don't say "but computers use base-2". People usually don't.

That's right -- the numbers should be formatted in a way that makes sense to the user. Who cares what the computer thinks?

The base-2 junk is nothing more than a geek shibboleth, implemented inconsistently since the Original Sin of calling 1024 a "kilobit" because it was "close enough". Networking speeds have been base-10 since the beginning, mass storage since the days of 20MB hard disk drives.

[thejadedmonkey]

I hope there's a way to change it to base 2, that's how it's supposed to be

Doesn't counting in base 10 go against what's actually there? Wouldn't that artificially inflate storage size?

Does that mean the upgrade from Leopard really only frees up 5.8 GBs of space rather than 6?
:cool:

The base 10 thing is because Apple got sick of all the "why have I lost HD space??!!!" topics on MR :cool:

Does the change to base 10 give any sort of benefit? I don't understand why they changed that. I mean I know the hard drive manufacturers do it, but their reason is to make their hard drives look as big as possible.

I agree, using base 10 doesn't make any sense at all. That HD manufacturers use base 10 instead of base 2 is bad enough already.

The only reason I can see Apple doing this, is to make it look like your (e.g.) 8GB iPhone actually has 8GB of space. Whenever you download a file it will look bigger on your HD than indicated because they multiply the size.

And if you want to write something on a 700MB CD, all of a sudden your 680MB file won't fit anymore or will apple also enlarge the CD size?

I don't know everything, so maybe I'm missing the point but I really don't agree with this and I'd like someone to explain me a single benefit (except for Apple making their HDs look bigger than they really are).

it's kind of stupid to switch from base 2 to base 10. it actually IS base 2 and apple won't change that.

however, the fact that most users still think 1024 = 1000 may have driven apple to that step...

its really funny that all u guys are freaking about this.... its really not that big a deal..... and itmay be the first step to getting other os's to do the same.... personally i look forward to my TB drives showing 1TB rather then 931MB

I don't think the base 10 thing will clear up any confusion at all, now every program that you download online will be bigger than announced on the website you got it from, and a 700 mb file won't fit a 700 mb cd anymore

guys guys GUYS! All Apple is doing is trying to change and ignore standards, much like they didn't use standard monitor cables. I really hope Apple changes this, or better yet, they get sued out of this world... there's no way they are above standards, but they think they are. Down with base 10. Bah!

[Machinima]

That's just completely wrong all the way around.

No its not, install Ubuntu like ive done tens of times this week and see for yourself, its one of the only operating systems i know what insists you leave some swap file space.

[twoodcc]

looking forward to the final release. i sure hope that it's released in september with no delays, if it's ready

[intel]

What don't you like about the Finder versus Windows Explorer?

Are you serious?? The list is huge, i feel as if you are trying to make me write an essay, the list is that big.
Lets get some things clear, the left side of the finder window is complete genius in it's simplicity and elegance. The right side of the window leaves much to be desired.

Widows has a clear address bar in a very intuitive position, where you would expect it consistent to the browser. Minor issue but still worth mentioning.

Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

I have bought everything apple. From apple monitor, mac pro, macbook pro, iphone, ipod, ipod hifi speakers, apple tv, and apple 30 inch cinema display, i love all things apple, i used to be a windows user up until 3 years ago.

At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.

I'm sorry but that's how i feel about finder and how i lost a lot of data. Please, friken append or update and don't just delete the frikin folder.

[tdream]

The base 10 thing is going to bring more confusion, but people will side with whoever makes them feel right. So apple user bought his 1TB drive and sees the full 1TB with OSX and not anything else, Apple is right, Apple makes him/her feel better. Apple wins... :apple:

[tdream]

Are you serious?? The list is huge, i feel as if you are trying to make me write an essay, the list is that big.
Lets get some things clear, the left side of the finder window is complete genius in it's simplicity and elegance. The right side of the window leaves much to be desired.

Widows has a clear address bar in a very intuitive position, where you would expect it consistent to the browser. Minor issue but still worth mentioning.

Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

I have bought everything apple. From apple monitor, mac pro, macbook pro, iphone, ipod, ipod hifi speakers, apple tv, and apple 30 inch cinema display, i love all things apple, i used to be a windows user up until 3 years ago.

At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.

I'm sorry but that's how i feel about finder and how i lost a lot of data. Please, friken append or update and don't just delete the frikin folder.

This man speaks the truth. You can't make a wheel into a different shape and expect it to perform like the original. Microsoft got there first and perfected it.

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thx, but where can I select this? I can't find it anywhere.

Select some text in any application that handles text input, such as TextEdit. From the menu choose Edit->Spelling & Grammar -> Show (or whatever it is called in you language). You can also press 'Cmd + :'

A new window will open highlighting your text and giving you alternatives. In the list at the bottom you see your current language. From this list choose 'Multilingual' and Apply and you are set up...

[ptsube]

I don't like the difference to counting; hard-drive manufacturers should report the actual, base 2 (number system computers work in!) value for their drives, instead of falsely advertising a value you don't get. A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, anything else is a lie intended to make you believe you're getting more than you actually are.

It's not going to change the fact that block-sizes will be measured in base 2, and that files must therefore fit within these blocks, so why make this change? It's stupid IMO, and I'll turn it off if there's a way to.

In that case we should all learn to type, and read in binary. That is what the computer uses. Shouldn't we make it easier for the computer?

[aardwolf]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

Ignore what the other guy said. I'm a beta tester...

Rosetta isn't isntalled by default. The first time you try to run a PPC app, it asks if you want to install Rosetta (which is included on the install DVD).

Although it didn't work in earlier betas, the last two versions of Snow Leopard have in fact worked with Quicken 2007 on the Mac. That was actually a bug report I filed to get it working. :-)

[slightly]

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.


Select your multiple files/folders and click alt-cmd-i. This is a floating info window which will automatically size your selections (and changes to match any new selections).

Matt

[ojwk]

Why do I have this feeling that Apple is selling us a huge Beta-testprogram for just 29$?

This whole SnowLeopard thing feels so immature...

Immature is rolling out a buggy GUI eye-candy which continually saps away system resources.

Immature is phasing out OS support for 'legacy' applications simply because they are old.

Immature is having 8 versions of essentially the same software.

Immature is Vista.

I'm glad that Apple has taken the initiative to concentrate on performance and efficiency rather than focusing on what could be described as superficial features. The whole concept of Snow Leopard is anything but immature.

[Veri]

The standards bodies defined "Giga" to mean 10^9 a long time ago, and they're pushing the computer industry to stop misusing the term.
I tend to like the rule of thumb, "If it's addressed by a binary address bus, it's a power of 2. Otherwise, power of 10." Of course, there are exceptions, like the common name for the 2880 sector floppy.

The resistance to doing something comes from each camp being so polarised. One considers convention to be de facto correct and sees redefinition as just further confusion: 1 MB of RAM = 1 MiB, and god knows no RAM manufacturer is suddenly going to sell "a 1 GiB stick" just to please standards bodies. The other camp recognises that "1 MB" has no precise definition even given many general contexts, and is concerned with its use for marketing deception.

Personally, I think standards bodies and new age nerds like those who edit computer articles on Wikipedia would do a lot better if they listened to practitioners rather than considering themselves blessed authorities (not just over this, but many things). Every time some dolt changes MB to MiB in Wikipedia I'm reminded of the disconnect between those who do and those who proclaim.

Immature is phasing out OS support for 'legacy' applications simply because they are old.
My XP installations from license purchases in 2001 are chugging along fine. How's your 2001 OS X box supported? 2005?

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Immature is rolling out a buggy GUI eye-candy which continually saps away system resources.

Immature is phasing out OS support for 'legacy' applications simply because they are old.



Cough, cough, tell this to the PowerPC guys in this forum...


Immature is having 8 versions of essentially the same software.

Immature is Vista.

I'm glad that Apple has taken the initiative to concentrate on performance and efficiency rather than focusing on what could be described as superficial features. The whole concept of Snow Leopard is anything but immature.

Ohh, nothing against the concept. Conceptionally also Vista was a nice OS.
It is the implementation of the concept that matters most. And the most stable and mature concept is nothing if the implementation is buggy...

But, please call this debate off. I will wait and see patiently what the Goods at Cupertino will hand down to me...

[*LTD*]

Are you serious?? The list is huge, i feel as if you are trying to make me write an essay, the list is that big.
Lets get some things clear, the left side of the finder window is complete genius in it's simplicity and elegance. The right side of the window leaves much to be desired.

Widows has a clear address bar in a very intuitive position, where you would expect it consistent to the browser. Minor issue but still worth mentioning.

Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

I have bought everything apple. From apple monitor, mac pro, macbook pro, iphone, ipod, ipod hifi speakers, apple tv, and apple 30 inch cinema display, i love all things apple, i used to be a windows user up until 3 years ago.

At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.

I'm sorry but that's how i feel about finder and how i lost a lot of data. Please, friken append or update and don't just delete the frikin folder.

Although I'm inclined to disagree with you in certain areas, I have to admit you do make some good points, and you're not alone. Reading your post reminded me of the musings of Jon Siarcusa, one of the more learned among the technorati. He wrote some wonderful and very insightful essays about the Finder and our modern way of file navigation in general over the years.

OS X is designed around the supreme simplicity of the OS interface, and the rendering of the most powerful features available to the user in a manner as uncomplicated as possible. The Finder is meant to be simple and visually interesting. Apple has tried to turn file navigation into an "experience", not just a mundane task. But by doing so, they lost some things.

It is interesting to note that the original intent, way back during the development of Tiger, was to use Spotlight for virtually everything - no file organization or extended Finder-play necessary. It didn't quite pan out like that. Although I imagine that if I was forced to do it the Spotlight way, then perhaps it might be a more efficient way of doing things. It turned out, however, that we are wedded to the process of file navigation, and when that process isn't quite right, it can cause a lot of frustration.

[lamadude]

Select some text in any application that handles text input, such as TextEdit. From the menu choose Edit->Spelling & Grammar -> Show (or whatever it is called in you language). You can also press 'Cmd + :'

A new window will open highlighting your text and giving you alternatives. In the list at the bottom you see your current language. From this list choose 'Multilingual' and Apply and you are set up...

Thanks, that seems to work :)

[intel]

Select your multiple files/folders and click alt-cmd-i. This is a floating info window which will automatically size your selections (and changes to match any new selections).

Matt

thanks for the info, it was very useful. But is was like giving me a crayon when i need a fine pen.

I'm working with the mouse, i should have all the options in my mouse hand. I don't want to find the i key with my mouse hand because my next step will be to bring my hand back on the mouse and find the cursor then find the close button once i have gotten my information and my hand back on the mouse. Apple brags about intuition but in reguards to finder.... they should really employ a click counter to count the amount of clicks required for specific tasks especially in finder. and getting negative points if you ever have to take your hand off the mouse when it doesn't deserve it. when you have to input a whole sentence, only then it is deserving to take your hand of the mouse, otherwise it's just hopeless intuition and lack of effort of apple's behalf on thinking different (hopefully different in the easy way for the user)

APPLE, YOU NEED TO EMPLOY A CLICK COUNTER BEFORE MICROSOFT LEAVES YOU IN THE DUST.

[Victor Odin]

I don't know everything, so maybe I'm missing the point but I really don't agree with this and I'd like someone to explain me a single benefit (except for Apple making their HDs look bigger than they really are).

You are missing the point.

Apple tells you what you want, and you say "Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted. This is the greatest thing ever."

God, one more question and you are sooo out of the cult.

Frigging disbelievers.

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thanks, that seems to work :)

Great! It is a pain with OSX that some of the very nice features are so well hidden that nobody finds them.

And Apple does not even bother to educate people about these features. Or does anybody know a hidden online Help-File for things like Grapher?

[SomeSwede]

It is a really bad change. You can't just change a decades old industry standard like that. It will just add to the confusion and the old myth that Macs are incompatible with everything.

[tdream]

You are missing the point.

Apple tells you what you want, and you say "Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted. This is the greatest thing ever."

God, one more question and you are sooo out of the cult.

Frigging disbelievers.

:D

[MD5Hash]

It seems like no one is actually bringing up the REAL problem - which is that for years we've been letting hard drive manufacturers get away with incremental hard drive robbery.

Sure, Base 10 is easier for counting in, but Base 2 is what it's actually in - this isn't the important thing.

The important thing is that we should be telling hard drive manufacturers to either "tell it like it is" leading to amusing storage amounts like 931GB disks, OR they should use the GiB title on the side of the box instead of GB, OR my actual favorite - they should suck it up, give us the extra 70 GB of space in the 1TB(ish) drive because really, if you've just paid for a 1TB drive, they really shouldn't mind tossing the extra 70 in there to make it come out even.

(as if that will ever happen, but until then I sometimes have mental flashes of red light which involve burning down a platter production facility)

[Detektiv-Pinky]

thanks for the info, it was very useful. But is was like giving me a crayon when i need a fine pen.

I'm working with the mouse, i should have all the options in my mouse hand. I don't want to find the i key with my mouse hand because my next step will be to bring my hand back on the mouse and find the cursor then find the close button once i have gotten my information and my hand back on the mouse. Apple brags about intuition but in reguards to finder.... they should really employ a click counter to count the amount of clicks required for specific tasks especially in finder. and getting negative points if you ever have to take your hand off the mouse when it doesn't deserve it. when you have to input a whole sentence, only then it is deserving to take your hand of the mouse, otherwise it's just hopeless intuition and lack of effort of apple's behalf on thinking different (hopefully different in the easy way for the user)

APPLE, YOU NEED TO EMPLOY A CLICK COUNTER BEFORE MICROSOFT LEAVES YOU IN THE DUST.

This and the fragmented interface with this multitude of helper palettes all over the place. Why would I want this info in a separate window?
Even more fiddling to get rid of it again after I am finished with the fact...

[masse]

I guess now leopard will free up EVEN MORE hard drive space!

[Kelmon]

Can't you just drag "British English" to being above "English" in the International System Preferences pane to fix this?

I use "Australian English" and don't notice the spell checker being incorrect for me...

http://img.skitch.com/20090622-e69uhife7r3gsk91sdt6m61aif.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/vandozza/bib1m/international)

Hmm, I've never noticed that before (well, that British English is an available option if I select the "Edit List" button). It'll be interesting to see if that makes a difference to the spell checker or whether it simply changes the names used in menus (assuming that the developer added a localisation for British English).

[autrefois]

Wow! Apple corrects a mistake it made 25 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_binary_prefixes#1984)!

Thank you for the history on this. So it looks like Apple is changing its mind on this after being one of the early adopters of the current mixed-base usage.

+1000 ;)

In your opinion, would that be exactly 1k, or 24 short of 1k. ;)

The more important news I think is that this "near final" release, isn't.

The whole concept of Snow Leopard is anything but immature.

This is what worries me. I'm not as interested in the concept of Snow Leopard, as I am in how well it works. A lot of things that are good on paper don't work as well in practice.

They say it's "near final", but some features mentioned in the keynote are absent, which I feel causes concern in a "near final" release that is 3 months before it hits the stores. Buggy would be understandable, absent is not at this stage IMO.

People can debate how good or mature Explorer is versus Finder (they each have their advantages and their quirks), but people aren't going to be happy if Snow Leopard's few new promised features are missing or not polished by the time it's released, or if a lot of applications don't work properly because Apple didn't give developers a final-enough copy far enough in advance.

I was all for a maintenance release instead of lots of new bells and whistles, I just hope they get it right.

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Hmm, I've never noticed that before (well, that British English is an available option if I select the "Edit List" button). It'll be interesting to see if that makes a difference to the spell checker or whether it simply changes the names used in menus (assuming that the developer added a localisation for British English).

This list typically only give the sort order for entries in the spelling alternatives.

If you want to change the spell-checker dictionary, you have to set it directly in the 'spelling & grammar' dialoge as described by my earlier post.

At least that is how it works in Leopard. And yes, Leopard already supports 'British English' spelling. I can testify to this.

[Kelmon]

This man speaks the truth. You can't make a wheel into a different shape and expect it to perform like the original. Microsoft got there first and perfected it.

While I tend to agree with all parts of the original rant against the Finder, I find myself able some of its sins for granting a keyboard shortcut to create a new Folder. Why this simple operation is not available under Windows without going through the "New" menu is quite beyond me. I may be wrong but I thought that there was a shortcut in Windows 3.11...

[intel]

This and the fragmented interface with this multitude of helper palettes all over the place. Why would I want this info in a separate window?
Even more fiddling to get rid of it again after I am finished with the fact...

i don't want it in a separate window, i am merely suggesting improvements to finder in the hopes that it will slowly catch up to windows explorer which is light years ahead of finder, please go back and read some of my other posts to get the context of my views. if you make a selection.... it should be like in windows explorer, no extra clicks, NOTHING, just a look see and you have all your information dynamically displayed so that you don't have to click and open other windows then close them once you have gotten your information etc

plus you don't need heaps of floating pallete windows, all you need is rightclick menu with cut copy and paste and rename, and file sizes should jsut be displayed neatly in the finder window. you dont need anything else in file brwsing or folder manipulation. its a complete set and all you need in a file browser, and even these basics.... FINDER DOES NOT HAVE.

[Veri]

(assuming that the developer added a localisation for British English).

As someone born and bred in Britain, I want to know what "English" is. If we go by origin, "English" is the English of Great Britain, and if we go by quantity of speakers, "English" is the English of India. But when I select "English" I get strange and mysterious spellings that don't accord with my experience of Eurasia. And something about walking like a jay.

:D

[ghostface147]

I downloaded and installed 10a380 and found it to be much faster once you are in the desktop. I did notice that the boot time has increased by about 10 seconds, and shutdown has slowed by about 5 seconds. The install did recover about 12 gigs of space for me, very impressive. Overall, it's a decent upgrade, IMHO.

[Detektiv-Pinky]

i don't want it in a separate window, i am merely suggesting improvements to finder in the hopes that it will slowly catch up to windows explorer which is light years ahead of finder, please go back and read some of my other posts to get the context of my views. if you make a selection.... it should be like in windows explorer, no extra clicks, NOTHING, just a look see and you have all your information dynamically displayed so that you don't have to click and open other windows then close them once you have gotten your information etc

plus you don't need heaps of floating pallete windows, all you need is rightclick menu with cut copy and paste and rename, and file sizes should jsut be displayed neatly in the finder window. you dont need anything else in file brwsing or folder manipulation. its a complete set and all you need in a file browser, and even these basics.... FINDER DOES NOT HAVE.

:D

Did I fail so utterly to express my thoughts. Please go back to read my post. I am 100% with you here. I also don't want it in a separate window and I agree to everything else you said.

However, that is how it currently works with the finder. Pressing cmd-i gives you a new window that you have take care of - how stupid.

[windywoo]

R u serious?

1. Microsoft stole the dock idea in Windows 7 from MAC OSX/
2. Finder is soo much better the explore in Windows and the version in SL blows it away with the previews, quick look, search, even to the point that when u download a application it shows a status bar in finder under the icon.
3. Dock Expose will be nice and blows away MS Areo Peak function.
4. Windows has nothing that compares to Expose at all!!!!!
5. Lets not forget things windows does have: Apple Mail, Stacks, Spaces, Stability, Speed, No Viruses, refined OS, iPhoto, iMovie, and the list can go on.

Fanboy bollocks. The sun doesn't revolve around Apple you know.

I am impressed that Snow Leopard can tell what timezone I am in, will they now change my homepage to the correct region too, as every version of Windows and Linux does?

[PsykX]

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere and I don't remember it being in Leopard but Snow Leopard automatically detects the language you are typing in. I type a lot in English and German and when I type in German it automatically switches to the German dictionary for spell checking.
Thanks God this is great!
I have tested Snow Leopard but haven't noticed this yet. It'll be great because I always type in either French or English...

That new pane to replace text strings for other strings (c) for a copyright sign for instance, it is great, but there isn't a lot in that except fractions and a couple of signs. I hope they will add more, a little bit like Microsoft Word does. And I hope it'll be easier to activate throughout the whole OS. Now I need to right click in a field and select the option to enable it in every field... people won't see that easily and it's annoying to always have to enable it. Especially because I've never knew how to enable it in.... Pages I think.

Now I need this fixed and grammar correction underlined in green throughout the whole OS and I'll be really happy on that side.

I mean, Pages compared to Word lacks a LOT of these language features, but if the whole OS gets it? Wow, every app will own officially :P

[intel]

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

no that's not what i'm saying... what i'm saying is that every car has a decent seat and a steering wheel. (in this sense, every brand of linux and windows explorer has cut and append options in their file browser)
What im saying is that the ferari that finder is... it does not have a steering wheel but instead 2 dials, one for left and one for right and for comfort wise, it does not have a seat just the frame for the seat, neatly organising files and folders should be set to default. the way finder is, is just like carrying a thick blanket with you every time you drive and every time you step in your car, you have to arrange the blanket on your seat so that it is comfortable for you to atleast sit in the damn ferarri. even ferarris should have at least some padding in their seats.

FINDER IS SEVERELY LACKING

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thanks God this is great!
I have tested Snow Leopard but haven't noticed this yet. It'll be great because I always type in either French or English...

<snip>

Already Leopard can automatically detect your input language. You only have to set the spell-checking to 'multilingual'.

[jay-t]

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

You may not know this, but when you have the items selected in Finder, try the shortcut "cmd, option + I" ;)

[johan.k]

Text Transformations a.k.a Change Case seems cool. TQ Apple.

[AidenShaw]

I tend to like the rule of thumb, "If it's addressed by a binary address bus, it's a power of 2. Otherwise, power of 10."

Agree - but use the SI binary prefixes when it is written. Memory in GiB, disks in GB.

As long as "GB" is always 10^9, and "GiB" is 2^30, there should be no confusion.

Note that disks and some other devices will continue to have sector sizes that are related to a power of two. This is a convenience for transferring data between the device and the power-of-two addressed main memory.

[kaworu1986]

Are you serious?? The list is huge, i feel as if you are trying to make me write an essay, the list is that big.
Lets get some things clear, the left side of the finder window is complete genius in it's simplicity and elegance. The right side of the window leaves much to be desired.

Widows has a clear address bar in a very intuitive position, where you would expect it consistent to the browser. Minor issue but still worth mentioning.

Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

I have bought everything apple. From apple monitor, mac pro, macbook pro, iphone, ipod, ipod hifi speakers, apple tv, and apple 30 inch cinema display, i love all things apple, i used to be a windows user up until 3 years ago.

At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.

I'm sorry but that's how i feel about finder and how i lost a lot of data. Please, friken append or update and don't just delete the frikin folder.

I would hug you.

Also, WHERE THE **** IS THE OPTION TO CUT AND PASTE TO MOVE FILES/FOLDERS? Dragging and dropping is a pain, especially when, as opposed to what happens in Windows, you don't have separate buttons for the various windows on the dock. And no, not maximizing windows (by dragging them, thanks Apple for not giving us a maximize button) ISN'T an acceptable solution.

[DELLsFan]

Oh goodie! I've been waiting YEARS for this feature!

One less click during install. Nirvana. :rolleyes:

[andiwm2003]

Are you serious?? The list is huge,...........................................At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.
...................................

well said.

it's sad but apples strategy to do everything through spotlight is bad. it's much better to have have a hierarchical systematic file structure to keep track of your data. and windows explorer is much better in making this happen than apples finder.

[DamnDJ]

Can anyone tell me if the system wide spell check includes the Terminal.app?

[FSMBP]

I would hug you.

Also, WHERE THE **** IS THE OPTION TO CUT AND PASTE TO MOVE FILES/FOLDERS? Dragging and dropping is a pain, especially when, as opposed to what happens in Windows, you don't have separate buttons for the various windows on the dock. And no, not maximizing windows (by dragging them, thanks Apple for not giving us a maximize button) ISN'T an acceptable solution.

Well if you cut a file, and something happens before you paste it...like Windows crashes, you lose that file. Or, human error - one time I cut a movie file from a folder and before I pasted it, I forgot I had cut it. Then in an e-mail I copied some text and I just realized I lost the movie because I had copied text from the e-mail.

Yeah, maybe it is a pain to copy a file, paste it to another then go back to delete the original - but I'd rather have that, then lose the file in an accident.

[parapup]

Apple seems to be a tad bit too much in love with Exchange - notice how Mail.app says Exchange IMAP instead of just IMAP (which is what is there in current version and is the correct thing to say - it is not like people are only going to use Exchange's IMAP implementation and there is no need to specify Exchange for the subset of people actually using Exchange IMAP server when a supported native mode access is available - Exchange IMAP implementation is compliant).

May be just a UI glitch that will be fixed before release perhaps...

[ddTaylor]

Ahhhh can't wait for Snow Leopard, it's definitely going to be good release.

X5-452: It doesn't inflate it, it just counts it differently, so when you buy a 250GB hard drive from PC World, you are actually going to get 250GB... instead of it showing up at 225 or whatever it would say.

It's a step in the simpler direction.

It is also another step in the direction of complete and total dumbing-down of our world. Silly! The next thing you know the entire world will go metric or something :)!

Seriously - I think it is a minor complaint on my part as I prefer base 2 as that is ACTUALLY what is their versus what your HD or computer box says. If that is the only complaint I have in the new SL I will be very happy - and as a TERRIBLE speller (although not as bad as my Graduate English Professor - who would ask the CLASS if she spelled a word correctly or even worse, ask if the context was correct!) the global spelling correction is MONEY, for me, anyway...

D

[kaworu1986]

Well if you cut a file, and something happens before you paste it...like Windows crashes, you lose that file. Or, human error - one time I cut a movie file from a folder and before I pasted it, I forgot I had cut it. Then in an e-mail I copied some text and I just realized I lost the movie because I had copied text from the e-mail.

Yeah, maybe it is a pain to copy a file, paste it to another then go back to delete the original - but I'd rather have that, then lose the file in an accident.

Fair enough, but at least give the user the OPTION to do so. It's not like CTR+X is used for something else by the Finder and there are OSX applications (some even by Apple) that already use the shortcut in this fashion.

[intel]

Well if you cut a file, and something happens before you paste it...like Windows crashes, you lose that file. Or, human error - one time I cut a movie file from a folder and before I pasted it, I forgot I had cut it. Then in an e-mail I copied some text and I just realized I lost the movie because I had copied text from the e-mail.

Yeah, maybe it is a pain to copy a file, paste it to another then go back to delete the original - but I'd rather have that, then lose the file in an accident.

you cut in windows explorer and if you dont get to paste nothing happens. file stays in original location.
File verification happens automatically in windows explorer and when all is well and good, pasted and verified, only then the original file gets deleted. windows has truly perfected this. finder makes me cry. only in finder you will accidently overwrite or lose files while you cut bcs the function is there somewhat half implented by some amature coder in the apple basement. cut is there but it is so hopeless that they try sort of to hide it. you will loose data if u dont use it correctly. microsoft;s way is foolproof and pure genius

[mrblack927]

Well if you cut a file, and something happens before you paste it...like Windows crashes, you lose that file. Or, human error - one time I cut a movie file from a folder and before I pasted it, I forgot I had cut it. Then in an e-mail I copied some text and I just realized I lost the movie because I had copied text from the e-mail.

Yeah, maybe it is a pain to copy a file, paste it to another then go back to delete the original - but I'd rather have that, then lose the file in an accident.

That's NOT how cut works. When you cut a file, it becomes "grayed" (in windows). Then when you paste it somewhere else, the grayed icon disappears from the old location and reappears in the new location. The file is not moved until you paste. If you cut a file then forget about it or your system crashes, the file would still be in the original folder because you never pasted it.
SO either you forgot where your original "movie" was, or you completely made that story up.

On a technical note, "cut" is a move operation, not a delete/create operation (as it may seem). When you cut/paste a file, all the system does is change the reference pointer. The actual file on on the drive is unmoved. Another reason why there is no way it could be lost.

Windows has enough flaws without you making up fake ones. For the record, there are only two things I miss about windows since I switched to mac. First, maximizing windows(!), and second, pretty much everything about windows explorer that was mentioned in this thread (thanks intel for putting it so eloquently). Agree completely. However, the good definitely outweighs the bad in OSX, so all we can do is enjoy it and wait for the day that it's perfect:)

[DamnDJ]

Well if you cut a file, and something happens before you paste it...like Windows crashes, you lose that file. Or, human error - one time I cut a movie file from a folder and before I pasted it, I forgot I had cut it. Then in an e-mail I copied some text and I just realized I lost the movie because I had copied text from the e-mail.

Yeah, maybe it is a pain to copy a file, paste it to another then go back to delete the original - but I'd rather have that, then lose the file in an accident.

That is the biggest load of BS ever. That does not happen.

[scottlinux]

I agree - the base 10 disk reporting is the same one the hard drive manufacturers use. For example it throws people off when they find out their 500GB drive is not actually 500GB.

We need hard drive makers to go the other way - not for Operating Systems to cave to them. Bah,

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Well if you cut a file, and something happens before you paste it...like Windows crashes, you lose that file. Or, human error - one time I cut a movie file from a folder and before I pasted it, I forgot I had cut it. Then in an e-mail I copied some text and I just realized I lost the movie because I had copied text from the e-mail.

Yeah, maybe it is a pain to copy a file, paste it to another then go back to delete the original - but I'd rather have that, then lose the file in an accident.

This must have been a very old version of Windows. In XP the file is silently put back in place 'if you cut and forgot to paste it somewhere else'....

[SandynJosh]

Why would you want automatic transmission on a Ferrari? :eek:

I was wanting a cup holder on my Ferrari. :mad:

[kaworu1986]

That's NOT how cut works. When you cut a file, it becomes "grayed" (in windows). Then when you paste it somewhere else, the grayed icon disappears from the old location and reappears in the new location. The file is not moved until you paste. If you cut a file then forget about it or your system crashes, the file would still be in the original folder because you never pasted it.
SO either you forgot where your original "movie" was, or you completely made that story up.

On a technical note, "cut" is a move operation, not a delete/create operation (as it may seem). When you cut/paste a file, all the system does is change the reference pointer. The actual file on on the drive is unmoved. Another reason why there is no way it could be lost.

Windows has enough flaws without you making up fake ones. For the record, there are only two things I miss about windows since I switched to mac. First, maximizing windows(!), and second, pretty much everything about windows explorer that was mentioned in this thread (thanks intel for putting it so eloquently). Agree completely. However, the good definitely outweighs the bad in OSX, so all we can do is enjoy it and wait for the day that it's perfect:)

Agree, although I would add Itunes (ridiculously bloated, Windows Media Player does the same amount of relevant functionality [device contact and data syncing shouldn't be handled by a media player, especially with iSync being part of the OS] while being MUCH faster) and the ABYSMAL media playback support (I actually reboot into Windows to watch movies) to the list of issues.

[psingh01]

there better be a hack to go back to base 2. i don't like this base 10 thing at all.

[SandynJosh]

For the record, there are only two things I miss about windows since I switched to mac. First, maximizing windows(!), and second...

To maximize, click on the green button in the title bar.

[Eidorian]

To maximize, click on the green button in the title bar.That's not really maximizing a window though to the full screen size though.

[ddTaylor]

its really funny that all u guys are freaking about this.... its really not that big a deal..... and itmay be the first step to getting other os's to do the same.... personally i look forward to my TB drives showing 1TB rather then 931MB

Wat type of system do you have where 1TB shown as less than a gigabyte? I need to avoid that platform as the overhead is very large :)!

I know what you meant but others may think you have a very inefficient set-up and your overhead is very large indeed!

D

[NT1440]

We need hard drive makers to go the other way - not for Operating Systems to cave to them. Bah,

What does it matter if everything is consistent?

[michael.lauden]

To maximize, click on the green button in the title bar.

it only stretches it to the 'best' viewing size for your screen. i enjoy this feature - i never really make anything smaller (except for finder+itunes) - safari is always at a good size.

[Dale Campbell]

This and the fragmented interface with this multitude of helper palettes all over the place. Why would I want this info in a separate window?
Even more fiddling to get rid of it again after I am finished with the fact...

Guys relax if it bothers you --that-- much buy a mouse with 2 buttons ad all of the get info etc is available, (CUE CRYING ABOUT ONE BUTTON APPLE MOUSE). :eek::apple::D

Personally I find it far quicker to use key strokes, I can navigate through all kinds of options. And I guess this varies from person to person but I have never had a problem doing 3 key commands with my non-mouse hand. I suppose I am used to key stokes in Final cut and Logic so that helps a bit.

[vt220]

Any news on OpenCL / h264 on Radeon HD 2400/2600/3xxx?
ATI seems to have the right drivers in the pipeline for opencl support...

[ddTaylor]

R u serious?

1. Microsoft stole the dock idea in Windows 7 from MAC OSX/
2. Finder is soo much better the explore in Windows and the version in SL blows it away with the previews, quick look, search, even to the point that when u download a application it shows a status bar in finder under the icon.
3. Dock Expose will be nice and blows away MS Areo Peak function.
4. Windows has nothing that compares to Expose at all!!!!!
5. Lets not forget things windows does have: Apple Mail, Stacks, Spaces, Stability, Speed, No Viruses, refined OS, iPhoto, iMovie, and the list can go on.

I just watched an episode if the Simpson's on Hulu (my kids LOVE that show - I do not, but it was three against one - so I lost) and they had a GREAT spoof on Apple - and the Apple store plus all the Apple products. It was the Mapple Store and the MiPhone and MyCube and Mypod - it was utterly fascinating how non-Apple users view die-hard Apple people. When I read your posting I think of that episode - because you feel that Apple can do no wrong and the OP is just plain of-base because NOTHING MS does can compare to Mapple, er, Apple. That is unfortunate and something I hope you consider next time you blindly follow Apple.

This is NOT a dig on you in the least, well not directly - but you should understand how non-Apple users view the Mac Elite and unfortunately for many in the Mac user-base the Simpson's portrayal of the small but vocal user-base is fairly accurate given many of the posts here and on the myriad other Apple fan sites and blogs.

Windows 7 DOES have a much better 'finder' feature compared to Apple - and NO, MS did NOT steal the dock/finder/search from Apple! They ARE similar but why do you feel that anything that is close to what Apple has done or will do is simply 'theft'? People are concurrently capable of similar ideas and execution of those ideas without someone 'poaching' those ideas.

I STRONGLY suggest heading to Hulu and watch the episode of the Simpson's I was speaking of. I am not sure you would find it entertaining but it is - like it or not, the way many Apple users and Mac elitists are viewed. I have many Windows users who would most likely enjoy using the Mac platform but will NOT because of the PERCEPTION of its user-base. Many posts here and elsewhere do nothing but promote that.

D

[lopoz]

thanks for the info, it was very useful. But is was like giving me a crayon when i need a fine pen.

I'm working with the mouse, i should have all the options in my mouse hand. I don't want to find the i key with my mouse hand because my next step will be to bring my hand back on the mouse and find the cursor then find the close button once i have gotten my information and my hand back on the mouse. Apple brags about intuition but in reguards to finder.... they should really employ a click counter to count the amount of clicks required for specific tasks especially in finder. and getting negative points if you ever have to take your hand off the mouse when it doesn't deserve it. when you have to input a whole sentence, only then it is deserving to take your hand of the mouse, otherwise it's just hopeless intuition and lack of effort of apple's behalf on thinking different (hopefully different in the easy way for the user)

APPLE, YOU NEED TO EMPLOY A CLICK COUNTER BEFORE MICROSOFT LEAVES YOU IN THE DUST.
Your hand doesn't have to leave the mouse:
1. Select the folders/files you want to know the combined size of
2. Right-click one of the files/folders
3. Press and hold alt with you non-mouse hand and click Show Inspector

[Dwight Schrute]

Windows 7 DOES have a much better 'finder' feature compared to Apple - and NO, MS did NOT steal the dock/finder/search from Apple! They ARE similar but why do you feel that anything that is close to what Apple has done or will do is simply 'theft'? People are concurrently capable of similar ideas and execution of those ideas without someone 'poaching' those ideas.



You have GOT to be kidding.

Wait, no it makes perfect sense to suggest that two competing companies would create similar products without influencing each other. :rolleyes: Gimme a break. Every business experiences this. If you aren't lifting ideas from your competitors while innovating on your own, the world is gonna pass you by.

[mrblack927]

Agree, although I would add Itunes (ridiculously bloated, Windows Media Player does the same amount of relevant functionality [device contact and data syncing shouldn't be handled by a media player, especially with iSync being part of the OS] while being MUCH faster) and the ABYSMAL media playback support (I actually reboot into Windows to watch movies) to the list of issues.

Thank you, those are also good points. The whole concept of ipod/itunes "library syncing" is atrocious. It's the reason I used an iRiver (linux based) mp3 player up until recently. I just love plugging it in and seeing it show up as a mass storage device. I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death already though so I digress.

As for watching videos on a mac, I've never had a problem. As soon as I got my mbp I installed perian, flip4mac, and vlc. Almost every format plays fine in quicktime and for the few that don't, they play in vlc.

[H$R]

its really funny that all u guys are freaking about this.... its really not that big a deal..... and itmay be the first step to getting other os's to do the same.... personally i look forward to my TB drives showing 1TB rather then 931MB

It might not be a big thing for you, but for some it will be. Think of how you will fastly compare files on differend OS's with each and another. There's another thread over here (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=721173) and it seems that many people will be bothered. If it's ok for you then fine. It might be better for the average consumer, but not for everybody. It has been alright for over 25 years, why change it now?

At least give us the option to turn it back.

I don't think that the other OS's will change it in the near future.

[ibwb]

I'd just like to add that my chief complaint with binary prefixes is that they've become impossible to use.

It used to be that you could see a file listed like this:
11714 2009-01-14 09:34 blah.txt

You'd think to yourself "OK, that's about 11.7K". In binary units 11.7K is 11980.8 bytes (yes, eight-tenths of a byte -- binary prefixes are technically incompatible with base-10 decimal notation). But in any case you are only off by 2% or so.

Nowadays we have a lot more files like this:
251006844 2008-12-16 10:27 bigfile.dat

Eyeballing it, people would call this a 251MB file. Geeks are aware that this isn't quite right with binary prefixes, but unless they whip out the calculator, they have no idea what the "real" binary value would be. 251MB in binary units is really 263192576 bytes -- the eyeball estimate is off by nearly 5%.

The error grows:
1KB - 2.3%
1MB - 4.6%
1GB - 6.8%
1TB - 9%

In other words, the use of "binary" lookalikes for SI prefixes involves a calculation that users cannot perform without the benefit of a computer. This becomes important in many real-world contexts -- suppose you know each photo you take is 10MB and you want to know how much space 1000 of them will take up. It ought not take a computer to tell me how many gigabytes a trillion bytes is.

[snberk103]

Select your multiple files/folders and click alt-cmd-i. This is a floating info window which will automatically size your selections (and changes to match any new selections).

Matt Whoa!! Thanks!! I never knew that one. :)

[AidenShaw]

At least give us the option to turn it back.

...and make sure that the option changes the spelling from "GB" to "GiB".


I don't think that the other OS's will change it in the near future.

Linux is moving in that direction - check out the "-h" and "-H" qualifiers to "ls". Many utilities are using "GiB" in their headings.

[FSMBP]

That is the biggest load of BS ever. That does not happen.

Woops! I was misinformed. For some reason, I thought I did something similar to that a long time ago. I definitely lost something but I guess I didn't do it through cut and paste. Sorry!!!!

[MacBoobsPro]

Thank you for explaining that! I wish all computers were correctly set up for the region they are actually sold in.

If you set them up correctly then it will.. er... be set up correctly! ;)

OSX when you first launch it asks which keyboard language you want. Being in the UK I choose British English as my primary language. :rolleyes:

[Krevnik]

I don't know everything, so maybe I'm missing the point but I really don't agree with this and I'd like someone to explain me a single benefit (except for Apple making their HDs look bigger than they really are).

The benefit is that when they put the prefix "Kilo" in front of a measurement, it actually means the same thing as "Kilo" in the standard metric measurement system.

The problem is that with "Kilobyte" it is really 1024 bytes, which isn't using the true definition of "Kilo" which is 1000. When you start getting into Mega, Giga, and Tera, the difference becomes very noticeable. Even though the total byte count is exactly the same in both cases, by using a non-standard definition for Kilo has gotten the computer industry in a weird spot for awhile now.

As long as the entire OS uses base 10 for the counting there is no 'bigger than they really are' trickery happening. They are simply reporting the SI-compliant size, rather than using the '1024 is close enough to 1000' trick that computers have been using for a couple decades. And yes, that is the original trick, as OS writers were trying to find a way to make calculating file sizes faster, and as 1024 was 'close enough' to 1000, they got away with it for the most part.

[H$R]

...and make sure that the option changes the spelling from "GB" to "GiB".

Ok, this one goes to you. That's somethins which is wrong..though false spelling doesn't bother me as much as new numbers.

Linux is moving in that direction - check out the "-h" and "-H" qualifiers to "ls". Many utilities are using "GiB" in their headings.

Yeah I've seen that.

I hope that others OS's will move to it sooner or later too. In the end it's easier for most of the users when they buy a 500 GB HD and they also "see" 500 GB data.

But at the moment I don't like it. But who knows, maybe the industry will change again.

[Krevnik]

Seriously - I think it is a minor complaint on my part as I prefer base 2 as that is ACTUALLY what is their versus what your HD or computer box says.

Uh, I'm not sure the difference between base 2 and base 10 is really understood, judging by this statement...

base 2: 1000000000
base 10: 512

They are fundamentally the same number, mathematically.

If I have 1024 bytes in my file... Most OSes would report that as 1.0KB. Snow Leopard would correctly report it as 1.024KB. If I have 50,000,000,000 bytes on my HDD, Leopard would report 46.5GB. Snow Leopard will report 50GB.

That is all that is changing here, which is moving away from the silly '1024 is close enough to 1000' prefix hack that has plagued us since early OS developers were looking for a way to make file size calculations faster and simpler, and instead using the true meaning of the SI prefixes, as others have posted in this thread.

[Cloudane]

4 GiB is 4.294967296 GB

/foreheadpalm

You're quite right :) That's what you get posting before coffee, end up multiplying one base by another.

[commander.data]

Uh, I'm not sure the difference between base 2 and base 10 is really understood, judging by this statement...

base 2: 1000000000
base 10: 512

They are fundamentally the same number, mathematically.

If I have 1024 bytes in my file... Most OSes would report that as 1.0KB. Snow Leopard would correctly report it as 1.024KB. If I have 50,000,000,000 bytes on my HDD, Leopard would report 46.5GB. Snow Leopard will report 50GB.

That is all that is changing here, which is moving away from the silly '1024 is close enough to 1000' prefix hack that has plagued us since early OS developers were looking for a way to make file size calculations faster and simpler, and instead using the true meaning of the SI prefixes, as others have posted in this thread.
I'm still of the opinion that the base 10 change won't make things simpler. It'd just yield the inconvenience of Leopard/Windows users swapping files with Snow Leopard users and the file size mysteriously changing or even not fitting since your free space isn't consistent. I don't see how that is a better situation then inaccurate HDD manufacturer size ratings. At least in the latter problem, it's fairly well known and consistent.

[Sambo110]

Can someone please explain this base 10 thing to me?

[Novaoblivion]

Can anyone tell me if the system wide spell check includes the Terminal.app?

In some cases that could be irritating for example:

me: fsck -fy /dev/disk1s2
OS X: oh you must mean ***** -fy /dev/disk1s2

:p

Being serious though, I would be curious to know the answer to this question as well.

[yg17]

That is all that is changing here, which is moving away from the silly '1024 is close enough to 1000' prefix hack that has plagued us since early OS developers were looking for a way to make file size calculations faster and simpler, and instead using the true meaning of the SI prefixes, as others have posted in this thread.

But unless every OS and every place in documentation and on the internet where a file size is given is in base 10, it's just going to cause even more confusion than "why is my 500 GB hard drive showing up as 480 GB?" mess.

Using base 2 may not be the proper way, but it's the way we've been using for 30 years and I see no need to change it.

[Krevnik]

I'm still of the opinion that the base 10 change won't make things simpler. It'd just yield the inconvenience of Leopard/Windows users swapping files with Snow Leopard users and the file size mysteriously changing or even not fitting since your free space isn't consistent. I don't see how that is a better situation then inaccurate HDD manufacturer size ratings. At least in the latter problem, it's fairly well known and consistent.

Who says the HDD manufacturers are inaccurate? Right now, they are the only ones using the SI prefixes correctly.

As a programmer myself, I find the fact that we are still using these lazy shortcuts pretty tasteless. 1024 is not Kilo, no matter how much we like it to be that way. So something has to give... either we start using the Kibi (Ki) prefix that SI has created for the sole purpose of letting programmers remain lazy, or we start using the correct SI prefixes.

Either way, while there is short-term pain, we gain in the long run as the prefixes used become easier to trust, instead of relying on the fact that we KNOW the prefix is not what it says on the tin.

[METOO999]

I agree, using base 10 doesn't make any sense at all. That HD manufacturers use base 10 instead of base 2 is bad enough already.

The only reason I can see Apple doing this, is to make it look like your (e.g.) 8GB iPhone actually has 8GB of space. Whenever you download a file it will look bigger on your HD than indicated because they multiply the size.

And if you want to write something on a 700MB CD, all of a sudden your 680MB file won't fit anymore or will apple also enlarge the CD size?

I don't know everything, so maybe I'm missing the point but I really don't agree with this and I'd like someone to explain me a single benefit (except for Apple making their HDs look bigger than they really are).

4.37 GB DVDs show up in SL as somewhere around 4.69 GB (IIRC), but they still burn correctly.

[kurono]

Regarding Finder:

@intel: You're completely right about these two BUGS: moving across devices can lead to data loss. Renaming operation getting interrupted from updating thumbnails. I think of the first I've heard that it's finally fixed in Snow Leopard.

But regarding your personal problems with Finder:
I don't have these problems and it appears in your 3 years on the Mac you haven't found out about command-option-I

Regarding this 10-base issue:
thanks, ibwb, you've helped me change my mind in the most sensible way!

[Kevster89]

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

Hahahaha... that made me laugh ;)

[001]

WTF? Base 10? What. I'm sure it's gonna cause many more problems than it solves.

[solipsism]

I agree, using base 10 doesn't make any sense at all. That HD manufacturers use base 10 instead of base 2 is bad enough already.

It makes perfect sense to the end user. The system needs to know about Base 2, but the user doesn’t.

It’s still the same size regardless of base to or base 10 or base 16 or base whatever. THe number of bytes have not changed, but now it can more easily digested by the average person.

Storage manufactures (not just for HDDs, but Apple does the same thing with their Flash sizes, which still represents in base 2) did this for marketing reasons, but as the drives get larger the discrepancy gets larger and more and more people (even those who are in computing for work) seem to not know where the capacity went. Often I hear it’s from formatting but that doesn’t account for many GB of space disappearing.

Being able to change it would be nice, for those so inclined, but since they also list the bytes it’s not really a big deal to figure it for those wanting to be cool with base 2. I would like them to get rid of the JEDEC standard altogether in favour of the SI standard of KiB/MiB/GiB/TiB for things like RAM, which would leave the SI standard of base 10 of KB/MB/GB/TB for base 10. It really does make a lot more sense.

[solipsism]

WTF? Base 10? What. I'm sure it's gonna cause many more problems than it solves.

It causes no problems. The system still works in base 2, but that 1TB the typical customers buys now says 1TB when installed, not 931GB. Which each new capacity increase this issue gets more pronounced. The consumer doesn’t need to work in base 2, that is for the backend, not the user. Nothing has actually changed, the bytes are still the same.

[kurono]

maybe it's just because "Mebibyte" and "Kibibyte" sound somewhat odd? :rolleyes:

[RMo]

- Snow Leopard now counts data sizes in base 10. In the example shown a 320GB hard drive shows as 320GB as opposed to 297GB


Noooooooooooooo.

Or, at least, that's what I thought at first (that they were giving in to hard drive manufacturers' labeling scheme and potential consumer confusion). But then, like another poster, I realized that with storage space and file sizes increasing and increasing, the mental conversions we often make between kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes (and terabytes...) become exponentially more erroneous the greater the size we're dealing with.

For example, 1000 bytes (1 KB) / 1024 bytes (1 KiB) =~ 98%, but 1000000000 bytes (1 GB) / 1073741824 bytes (1 GiB) =~ 93%, and it's only going to get worse.

The only bad thing is that this will occasionally be different from some users' expectations if others (Microsoft, application developers, etc.) don't follow suit, but it has the advantage of making questions such as "How many 5 MB JPEGs can I fit on my 512 MB flash drive?" questions a lot easier to answer without busting out a calculator or dealing with risky decimal approximations.

[solipsism]

maybe it's just because "Mebibyte" and "Kibibyte" sound somewhat odd? :rolleyes:

Oh, well if it sounds odd then we should just continue to use the exact same term to mean two similar things but with completely different measurements because clarity makes no sense if it sounds odd.

[gnasher729]

I hope there's a way to change it to base 2, that's how it's supposed to be

Actually, it is not. Computer memory is the only area where the letters K, M and G have been incorrectly used to mean 1,024, 1,024 x 1,024 and 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024. If you want these meanings, the correct abbreviations are KiB, MiB and GiB. See for example http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

No matter what, we will have fewer complaints from unsuspecting computer users who buy a 500 GB drive and when the OS displays 465 GB, they think someone is cheating them.

It makes perfect sense to the end user. The system needs to know about Base 2, but the user doesn’t.

Where does the system need to know about base 2? I think the system doesn't actually care. At the lowest level, you will have a byte offset relative to the start of the hard drive; that needs to be translated into a platter/track/sector number, which is quite complicated because the number of sectors per track is different from track to track. There is no need for binary arithmetic at all.

WTF? Base 10? What. I'm sure it's gonna cause many more problems than it solves.

What problems would it cause? I remember wasting lots of time because Disk Utility didn't even agree with itself about the meaning of "GB". If everyone agrees on the same thing, that can only help.

[*LTD*]

It makes perfect sense to the end user. The system needs to know about Base 2, but the user doesn’t.

It’s still the same size regardless of base to or base 10 or base 16 or base whatever. THe number of bytes have not changed, but now it can more easily digested by the average person.

Storage manufactures (not just for HDDs, but Apple does the same thing with their Flash sizes, which still represents in base 2) did this for marketing reasons, but as the drives get larger the discrepancy gets larger and more and more people (even those who are in computing for work) seem to not know where the capacity went. Often I hear it’s from formatting but that doesn’t account for many GB of space disappearing.

Being able to change it would be nice, for those so inclined, but since they also list the bytes it’s not really a big deal to figure it for those wanting to be cool with base 2. I would like them to get rid of the JEDEC standard altogether in favour of the SI standard of KiB/MiB/GiB/TiB for things like RAM, which would leave the SI standard of base 10 of KB/MB/GB/TB for base 10. It really does make a lot more sense.

This.

[solipsism]

Where does the system need to know about base 2? I think the system doesn't actually care.
It’s the basis for computing: one or zero.

[jdechko]

Also, with respect to file sizes, on your own computer, there will be no problems as the entire system will report in base 10. So it's not like only the hard drive will be base 10. CDs and DVDs will report base 10, file sizes will be reported in base 10, flash drives will be base 10. So there won't be any confusion until you're jumping across platforms.

While this is the right way of doing things, I think it will still be a hard pill to swallow, unless the industry is already in agreement (and this will be a feature in Win 7 as well?)


EDIT: I just learned that the CD standard is base 2 reporting, but I still think that SL will show it in base 10. So we will have the issue we currently have, but just with CD's instead of Hard Drives and DVDs.

[Sbrocket]

Developers aren't allowed to say too much, however the current build of Snow Leopard doesn't even support many current Leopard apps, such as Little Snitch, and basically no PPC apps, however PPC support is an install option, which means Apple is either actively blocking older apps from working, or they aren't going to work in the final release, basically someones going to have to remake them.

Eh, blocking? System components changed, Machinima - its a large, point release of an OS. Give the software developers time to update their software.

[Burai]

Why do I have this feeling that Apple is selling us a huge Beta-testprogram for just 29$?

This whole SnowLeopard thing feels so immature...

They sold us a beta test with 10.5.0 for $129. This one should be relatively plain sailing.

Still, the smart money is on waiting for 10.6.1 before you buy.

[ddTaylor]

You have GOT to be kidding.

Wait, no it makes perfect sense to suggest that two competing companies would create similar products without influencing each other. :rolleyes: Gimme a break. Every business experiences this. If you aren't lifting ideas from your competitors while innovating on your own, the world is gonna pass you by.

That is NOT what I said! Please try to read and then re-read my post, then reply. I did not say that - I said it is POSSIBLE that two companies can develop the same idea concurrently - period. And do I think Apple and MS stole the finder option from each other? NO! THAT was what I said.

Please - do not put words in my mouth. Do I think MS stole anything from Apple for W7? Possibly - but it is more likely that they were developing the same or similar technologies concurrently. THAT is what I said. So what if they 'borrow' an idea - that is NOT theft - especially given the different spin each take on the 'borrowed' technology. As was said in the movie 'Pump Up the Volume' - "all the good ideas has been thought-up - so what is the world left with?". The same holds true in the computer and software business as it is a giant incestuous pool of shared genetic material - all the same basic ideas modified and updated with new features here and there - nothing more, nothing less. When is the last time you have actually seen a REVOLUTIONARY computer advancement? Not EVOLUTIONARY advancement but REVOLUTIONARY...

OS X is nothing but a fancy GUI over BSD - although a very, very good GUI with many great advancement and updates - but it is at the core BSD. What is Windows? It still uses technology based on Windows 2.X and 3.X. It still uses arcane DOS commands and overlays - although with many more refinements and updates.

Anyway - please do not put words in my mouth - I can do that quite well for myself - along with all the associated problems that occur when I speak!

D

[ddTaylor]

Uh, I'm not sure the difference between base 2 and base 10 is really understood, judging by this statement...

base 2: 1000000000
base 10: 512

They are fundamentally the same number, mathematically.

If I have 1024 bytes in my file... Most OSes would report that as 1.0KB. Snow Leopard would correctly report it as 1.024KB. If I have 50,000,000,000 bytes on my HDD, Leopard would report 46.5GB. Snow Leopard will report 50GB.

That is all that is changing here, which is moving away from the silly '1024 is close enough to 1000' prefix hack that has plagued us since early OS developers were looking for a way to make file size calculations faster and simpler, and instead using the true meaning of the SI prefixes, as others have posted in this thread.

I do not dispute that - but they are fundamentally changing the way and value of that measurement. It does not imply the intrinsic value has changed -just the method by which it is displayed. I did a poor job of making my point (which I often do - according to my wife and children) - but in reality they are changing the 1024 to 1000 therefore invalidating the 'standard' way or communication that form of measurement. That is all.

I DO understand what you are saying and I DO understand base 10 versus base 2 - but when you change the ACTUAL value of 1024 to 1000 to make thing easier for the customer is just plain silly - sort of like not allowing my sons baseball team to 'win' in the local rec league because it might 'hurt the feelings' of those on the receiving end of that loss - so they just do not keep score any longer thus allowing everyone to be a winner - silly, huh? That is why I think the swap from the recognized (generally) unit of measurement of 1024 to the generally NOT recognized value of 1000 is dumb - but not something that will decline civilization - just the dumbing-down of society.

D

[fef714]

Does that mean the upgrade from Leopard really only frees up 5.8 GBs of space rather than 6?
:cool:

lol, good question :p

[Shunnabunich]

Like I said in the other thread about the Base 10 thing, as long as Apple provides a way to switch OS X's reporting of data sizes back to the truthful Base 2 method (i.e. by changing a value in some obscure .plist), I've got no problem. It's only if they insist on having it only report dishonest information that I'll be ticked.

[SleepyHead157]

I'm really excited for this release. I can't wait. I'll definitely be getting the family pack since I have more than one mac at home.

[jdechko]

All of this discussion has also got me thinking that maybe this is why Windows Explorer in Vista doesn't show things as M(sic)B or G(sic)B, but only as KB. In a twisted way, it makes sense to me now more than ever. I had actually been looking for a way to change it back, but with my newfound understanding, I will be leaving it as is.

Of course, when I get my Mac, I will just be leaving it.

[AidenShaw]

Like I said in the other thread about the Base 10 thing, as long as Apple provides a way to switch OS X's reporting of data sizes back to the truthful Base 2 method (i.e. by changing a value in some obscure .plist), I've got no problem. It's only if they insist on having it only report dishonest information that I'll be ticked.

IMO, they've gotten rid of the dishonest base 2, and are using the globally accepted definition of "kilo/mega/giga/tera" et al.

Kudos to Apple for honoring standards.

[Peace]

I'm not a coder by any stretch of the imagination but couldn't the change to base 10 have something to do with future development of the ZFS filesystem ?

[doug in albq]

7 pages of people discussing base 10 vrs base 2...wacky!

SNOW LEO HAS NO FONT SMOOTHING OPTIONS. The one default makes the fonts on my display look very poor.

I will not upgrade if Apple does not fix this glaring omission.

[soup4you2]

OS X is nothing but a fancy GUI over BSD - although a very, very good GUI with many great advancement and updates - but it is at the core BSD. What is Windows? It still uses technology based on Windows 2.X and 3.X. It still uses arcane DOS commands and overlays - although with many more refinements and updates.

Anyway - please do not put words in my mouth - I can do that quite well for myself - along with all the associated problems that occur when I speak!

D

Only the Mach Kernel is BSD, the Userland is Darwin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)

[Mufasa804]

This sounds awesome. So if I understand this correctly, my external hard drive which is 1TB will read as 1TB instead of 930GBs.

Question:

So now that I have 70 extra GBs, I throw 70GBs worth of stuff on it, and fill it up. What happens if I plug it into a PC? Will the PC read the drive as 1TB and 1TB worth of stuff? And vice versa with Leopard and Tiger.

[fluffy]

I've written up a little rant about the base-10 change (http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/e/2009/06/22-base10_file_sizes.php) (spoiler: I think it's a good thing).

[solipsism]

IMO, they've gotten rid of the dishonest base 2, and are using the globally accepted definition of "kilo/mega/giga/tera" et al.

Kudos to Apple for honoring standards.

Now they need to do it on their iDevices, too.

PS: I mentioned this months ago when Snow Leopard first started this. This isn’t new for this current Beta.

[gnasher729]

But unless every OS and every place in documentation and on the internet where a file size is given is in base 10, it's just going to cause even more confusion than "why is my 500 GB hard drive showing up as 480 GB?" mess.

Using base 2 may not be the proper way, but it's the way we've been using for 30 years and I see no need to change it.

A few years ago, carpet shops in England had to change from Imperial to metric measurements. Now square yards anymore, but square meters. I needed a carpet and entered a carpet shop. They had changed all their prices to something like "£12.99 per 0.836127 square meters".

[solipsism]

A few years ago, carpet shops in England had to change from Imperial to metric measurements. Now square yards anymore, but square meters. I needed a carpet and entered a carpet shop. They had changed all their prices to something like "£12.99 per 0.836127 square meters".

The UK is screwy. I see Km for distance but see that speed is often done in Mph.

BTW, Top Gear serier premiered last night. Woot!

[Shunnabunich]

IMO, they've gotten rid of the dishonest base 2, and are using the globally accepted definition of "kilo/mega/giga/tera" et al.

Kudos to Apple for honoring standards.

I think if they were going for honesty, they would just be adding an "i" to the units. As ridiculous as every single last one of us would feel talking about the SI's much-vaunted "bebbybytes", at least it wouldn't be an act of caving in to hard drive manufacturers' schemes to misrepresent storage capacities to consumers.

The DATA ITSELF which all these numbers represent is inherently Base 2-based, and until, say, quantum computers become the norm instead of binary ones and the underlying nature of their data can be allowed to change, no amount of greed-fueled Base 10 revisionism is going to magically become true. (Even then, there are, what, 32 quantum states? There we are, back in the same old mess again.)

In my opinion, the desire to "simplify" a thing for people who don't know much about computers does not justify "covering up" or falsifying the nature of that thing.

I think the real issue, though, is what I briefly mentioned above. If the SI had picked a better-sounding name for these new units, people would be much happier to adopt them, and none of this kerfuffle would be taking place. I honestly cringe inside every time I think about bebbybytes. Ridicule me for being a macho troglodyte if you like, it's just how I feel about them. :p

[gnasher729]

It’s the basis for computing: one or zero.

Oh, I see. What I don't get: If 0's and 1's are the basis for computing, how come our payroll department manages to print my salary using decimal numbers? Why is a dollar split in hundred parts, and why do people call that a "decimal" system and not a "centennial" system? Shouldn't a day have either 16 or 32 hours to be more compatible with our computer systems, with 64 minutes per hour and 64 seconds per minute? And I heard Intel is working on processors with six cores, that cannot possibly work, can it?

Now seriously, can you think of a real reason instead of platitudes like above why a computer should care whether memory sizes are displayed in binary or decimal? And why we would base things on the base 2^10, and not 2^16? I mean, come on, two raised to the tenth power, that's decimal numbers right there. Be consequent and use only 4 = 2^2, 16 = 2^4, 65,536 = 2^16 and someone else can write down the value of 2^16. :D

[lamadude]

This sounds awesome. So if I understand this correctly, my external hard drive which is 1TB will read as 1TB instead of 930GBs.

Question:

So now that I have 70 extra GBs, I throw 70GBs worth of stuff on it, and fill it up. What happens if I plug it into a PC? Will the PC read the drive as 1TB and 1TB worth of stuff? And vice versa with Leopard and Tiger.

I'm not sure if this was a serious question or a joke, but you're not magically getting any extra space. If it was a full drive it will remain a full drive, it's just a different way of presenting it.

[mrblack927]

The reason they are switching to base 10 is because apple has a new direction.
The target market for macs used to be geeks but they are a small and almost saturated market. Apple knows the real money is in layman computer users who don't know and don't care to learn.

Just look at the recent hardware changes they have made... SD card slot instead of expresscard slot, miniDisplayPort instead of DVI, Glossy screens only, chicklet keyboards, fewer usb ports.

Then look at the software... timecapsule for backup/reinstall, itunes for syncing your entire life, mobile me for internet services, and the itunes store for getting any and all media (and apps). These things are simple and elegant but they are also restricting. Very little is actually customizable anymore.

Finally, price cuts across the board to make their products more obtainable.

What does all this mean? Apple is moving towards an idiot-proof computing solution for the masses. I'm sure they would like to keep catering to the professionals who use macs in industry but there is just too much money to be made.

[Shunnabunich]

Well, someone's wearing their Smartass Hat today. :p

Payroll, dollars, hours, etc.

...:D

On the computers of your company's accountants, all that data is stored as binary data. The computers are instructed to do us the service of converting the numbers back to whichever format is appropriate. For the purposes of payroll, banking, timekeeping and so on, that's fine. It makes perfect sense, that's great, keep on rockin' on. When it comes to finding out how much space your accountant's Microsoft Excel (hurk) spreadsheet takes up on the server, we're explicitly dealing with binary data, and it makes sense to represent it as such.

Shouldn't a day have either 16 or 32 hours...
I forget where I read/heard this, but wasn't there once a movement to convert the oh-so-"archaic" timekeeping system to decimal? 10 hours in a day, each comprised of 100 minutes, themselves each having 100 seconds, or something like that? As we can see, it didn't end up changing much. Time is still measured in 60-second minutes and 24-hour days. We seem to be working around that without killing ourselves. The same goes for digital data. As Steve once said about the iMac G4, "let each part be true to itself."

[winninganthem]

I DO understand what you are saying and I DO understand base 10 versus base 2 - but when you change the ACTUAL value of 1024 to 1000 to make thing easier for the customer is just plain silly - sort of like not allowing my sons baseball team to 'win' in the local rec league because it might 'hurt the feelings' of those on the receiving end of that loss - so they just do not keep score any longer thus allowing everyone to be a winner - silly, huh? That is why I think the swap from the recognized (generally) unit of measurement of 1024 to the generally NOT recognized value of 1000 is dumb - but not something that will decline civilization - just the dumbing-down of society.


Hahahahaha! That made my day right there. Thanks :D

I agree completely, they definitely shouldn't hide the actual number.

Maybe someone will find a low level tweak to change it back to base 2? :p

[Stridder44]

Why do I have this feeling that Apple is selling us a huge Beta-testprogram for just 29$?

This whole SnowLeopard thing feels so immature...

Then do what I do and wait a month or two. Rather, wait for a point release to come out. This isn't a flawless method by any means, but at least it'll give you some peace of mind.

[Mekgek]

I hope they finally fix the finder in Snow Leopard. It's kinda sad that the 2009 OSX finder is still WORSE than the explorer in Windows 95...

[ortuno2k]

I agree with Intel with most of his comments about Windows Explorer vs. Finder.
For years I've worked on both systems, and still find Explorer to be much easier/more effective/faster to use than Finder. File Management, moving files and folders around and similar semi-advanced tasks are kind of a pain under Finder. And I would LOVE a cut/paste option for Finder, as well as replacing folders but first checking the contents and only overwriting the contents that are the same (but older), instead of deleting the outside folder and copy on top of.
Anyways...thanks Intel!

[ddTaylor]

Only the Mach Kernel is BSD, the Userland is Darwin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)

What my comment not correct, then? It was - I did not say it WAS BSD but was BASED on BSD - and the kernel IS BSD. Darwin is STILL based on BSD - it was an offshoot from BSD - for Apple branded gear. It is at heart BSD - although modified. The kernel and underlying OS (command line) are available free as open source without the Interface (or was at one point). My point is fundamentally correct. The OS is an offshoot of an open source and commercial project as it takes elements form both worlds.

D

[elistan]

This sounds awesome. So if I understand this correctly, my external hard drive which is 1TB will read as 1TB instead of 930GBs.

Question:

So now that I have 70 extra GBs, I throw 70GBs worth of stuff on it, and fill it up. What happens if I plug it into a PC? Will the PC read the drive as 1TB and 1TB worth of stuff? And vice versa with Leopard and Tiger.

That's no how it works. An HDD advertised as exactly 1TB has 1,000,000,000,000 bytes worth of storage. Leopard reports that as 931.32 GB of space because to Leopard, 1TB is actually 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. (That's 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024.) Snow Leopard would instead report the exact same drive as having exactly 1TB, or 1000 GB. The size of the drive did not change. If you take your 100% full 930 GB drive from Leopard and put it in a Snow Leopard system, you will end up with a 100% full 1TB drive. You will not be able to put any more data on the drive via Snow Leopard than via Leopard, Tiger, Windows, Linux, or whatever.

[AidenShaw]

...the SI's much-vaunted "bebbybytes"...
...
I honestly cringe inside every time I think about bebbybytes.

There's no bebby, by the way. ;)

[Shunnabunich]

There's no bebby, by the way. ;)

Oh, I'm well aware; I was just poking fun at how much like baby-talk it sounds. :D I think one guy referred to them as "bibbity-bobbity-bytes", too.

[solipsism]

Oh, I see. What I don't get: If 0's and 1's are the basis for computing, how come our payroll department manages to print my salary using decimal numbers? Why is a dollar split in hundred parts, and why do people call that a "decimal" system and not a "centennial" system? Shouldn't a day have either 16 or 32 hours to be more compatible with our computer systems, with 64 minutes per hour and 64 seconds per minute? And I heard Intel is working on processors with six cores, that cannot possibly work, can it?
This has nothing to do with how the values are represented to the user. Time and other values can be converted or represented in any form the programming wishes it to, but that doesn’t alter the way the core of the system thinks. It’s all ones and zeros and the average user shouldn’t have to ever worry about that.

Seriously, if you don’t realize that currency is still decimal and not representing a single character capable to 100 values then there is just nothing rationale or logical for me to say to convince you that a decimal-based system is best for the user when representing capacity.


I forget where I read/heard this, but wasn't there once a movement to convert the oh-so-"archaic" timekeeping system to decimal? 10 hours in a day, each comprised of 100 minutes, themselves each having 100 seconds, or something like that? As we can see, it didn't end up changing much. Time is still measured in 60-second minutes and 24-hour days. We seem to be working around that without killing ourselves. The same goes for digital data. As Steve once said about the iMac G4, "let each part be true to itself."
Decimal Time. First used by the Chinese then by the French, though French Revolutionary Time is more memorable of the two. I’m sure there is a Wikipedia page on it somewhere. It would make calculations within time easier, but since you can’t escape 365¼ day years and because of the nature of time it’s really more trouble than it’s worth. Hell, it’s hard enough to get people in the US to stop using the Christian-centric BC/AD for BCE/CE (though it really doesn’t matter to me as it’s still based on the Julian Calender start so it’s still representing the notion of Christ’s birth).

[cg0def]

i tried timezone and it doesnt work..... it like its looking for a gps perhaps a
sign of things to come?

I does not need GPS in order to get your location. There is a whole framework that Apple built before they started using GPS in order to get your location based on IP address and what routers you are going through and a bunch of other stuff that is not publicly disclosed. The problems however is that the framework is not really perfect and I believe you do not have a complete/bug free implementation in the latest build.

[cg0def]

I hope they finally fix the finder in Snow Leopard. It's kinda sad that the 2009 OSX finder is still WORSE than the explorer in Windows 95...

Dude you really don't know what you're talking about. I have yet to see Finder crash and I have seen countless times Explorer crash on every single version of Windows ( for no apparent reason ). I have no idea what it is that you don't like about Finder ( and you never did say ) but a chunk of it was rewritten for 10.6 and although some features are still missing it works really well. And yes I used it for day to day tasks.

And for everybody complaining about the new way of computing sizes ... the storage industry is not going to change any time soon and they have been using 10^x instead of 2^x ever since I can remember. So it only makes sense to start using a standard that is clearly not going away. Plus when you get to large HDD sizes like we are all using today the different base makes a huge difference and buying a new computer or a hard drive only to find out that it is not the size that it says on the box is a heck of a lot more confusing than find out that the same file is a different size on different OSes. But since this is still a development build there is a very good chance that all will be back to normal for the final release.

[wetrix]

Can't you just drag "British English" to being above "English" in the International System Preferences pane to fix this?

I use "Australian English" and don't notice the spell checker being incorrect for me...

http://img.skitch.com/20090622-e69uhife7r3gsk91sdt6m61aif.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/vandozza/bib1m/international)

Thank you!

This man speaks the truth. You can't make a wheel into a different shape and expect it to perform like the original. Microsoft got there first and perfected it.

Agreed. Finder gets the job done, but Explorer really does beat the pants off of it. Why can't I cut and paste Steve?

Dude you really don't know what you're talking about. I have yet to see Finder crash and I have seen countless times Explorer crash on every single version of Windows ( for no apparent reason ). I have no idea what it is that you don't like about Finder ( and you never did say ) but a chunk of it was rewritten for 10.6 and although some features are still missing it works really well. And yes I used it for day to day tasks.

Finder crashes all the time and is full of bugs. I often have to restart finder in order to input text or even just to rename a movie file that keeps being refreshed.

This sounds awesome. So if I understand this correctly, my external hard drive which is 1TB will read as 1TB instead of 930GBs.

Question:

So now that I have 70 extra GBs, I throw 70GBs worth of stuff on it, and fill it up. What happens if I plug it into a PC? Will the PC read the drive as 1TB and 1TB worth of stuff? And vice versa with Leopard and Tiger.

No, all your current files will appear larger. Thus 930GB of files in Leopard shows up as 1TB of files in SL.

[Krevnik]

I think if they were going for honesty, they would just be adding an "i" to the units. As ridiculous as every single last one of us would feel talking about the SI's much-vaunted "bebbybytes", at least it wouldn't be an act of caving in to hard drive manufacturers' schemes to misrepresent storage capacities to consumers.

Explain how hard drive manufacturers are misrepresenting storage capacities? They say it has 50 billion bytes on it, or 50GB. Unless it has some number other than 50 billion bytes, then they aren't misleading. Giga = 10^9 = 1 billion. So 50 Gigabytes /is/ 50 billion bytes.


The DATA ITSELF which all these numbers represent is inherently Base 2-based, and until, say, quantum computers become the norm instead of binary ones and the underlying nature of their data can be allowed to change, no amount of greed-fueled Base 10 revisionism is going to magically become true. (Even then, there are, what, 32 quantum states? There we are, back in the same old mess again.)

This is not even the point. The data itself is *NOT* changing. Just the prefix used for reporting. 1024 bytes is still 1024 bytes. What is changing is that if I have a file that is 1000 bytes, it gets reported as 1KB, not 0.9KB.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with reporting data that will usually fall along some boundary of 2^n using bog-standard prefixes that have been in use a lot longer than computers have.

If Apple expects to continue using the 'bitshift to divide by 2^10, which happens to be 1024' trick, then I expect them to become honest and start using the 1024-based prefixes. If anything, programmers have been the ones lying by calling 1024 'Kilo' when it has been defined as 1000 and taken as standard a hell of a lot longer. They have no claim to say what a standard metric unit means or doesn't mean.

[ironman159]

I Just Love Threads Like This One.:d

[soup4you2]

I Just Love Threads Like This One.:d

Agreed :)

/popcorn

[Dmac77]

I actually like that Apple is switching to base 10. Less "why does it say that I only have x Gb's" threads FTW. Apple should include an option to switch back to base 2 though.

Don

[Michael Belisle]

It is a really bad change. You can't just change a decades old industry standard like that. It will just add to the confusion and the old myth that Macs are incompatible with everything.

The standard already changed. The IEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60027), IEEE (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541), ISO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_80000), and NIST (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html) all agree: "kilo-" is 10^3. "kibi-" is 2^30. Apple's might just be one of the first OS makers to join the party.

In other words, the use of "binary" lookalikes for SI prefixes involves a calculation that users cannot perform without the benefit of a computer. This becomes important in many real-world contexts -- suppose you know each photo you take is 10MB and you want to know how much space 1000 of them will take up. It ought not take a computer to tell me how many gigabytes a trillion bytes is.

Wow! I can't wait until the new standard takes over and I can do math in my head instead of typing ls -lh to get file sizes, or seeing crap like "182.0 MB (190813831 bytes)". Just thinking about the current state of affairs and finally seeing light on the horizon is making me angry (that it's taking so long) and excited (as the prospect of a future that's consistent) at the same time.

[bobertoq]

Doesn't counting in base 10 go against what's actually there? Wouldn't that artificially inflate storage size?Not if the available hard drive space is also counted in base 10. If the files are counted in base 10 and the hard drive space is counted is space 10 then there wouldn't be any inflation.

What? An Apple product that doesn't contain the features that they said it would??

At this point I don't see how the hell Apple is going to sell the everyday user on upgrading. Developers? Fine. New users? You won't know the difference. But, everytime I read these preview articles, something is missing or taken out or is no longer going to be included.No, that is a developer version. The final version that will go on shelves will have the new features.

[kikuchiyo]

That was for swap file space because computers a few decades ago didn't have enough RAM, however it hasn't been necessary on Windows or Mac for a long long time, however certain distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu still need it.

Uh, no.

All modern PCs (OSX, Windows, and Linux) use swap space on the hard drive. Though I notice it less now that I upgraded to 3GB of RAM, OSX still uses swap space, it still uses swap. With 1GB of RAM OSX needed a ton of swap space and I noticed it getting slow when the main drive was low on space.

[Michael Belisle]

Doesn't counting in base 10 go against what's actually there? Wouldn't that artificially inflate storage size?

Not if the available hard drive space is also counted in base 10. If the files are counted in base 10 and the hard drive space is counted is space 10 then there wouldn't be any inflation.

As an engineer who prefers clear, unambiguous, and consistent representations of numbers instead of context-based rules of thumb, the answer is indeed "no". The underlying number is still the same. There will always be so many bytes in your file, regardless of how you approximate the size using a prefix.

The key is that everyone knows what you're talking about when say something is 1 KB. Today, that's not clear because KB is not uniquely defined. Saying that I should magically understand that a kilobyte of RAM is binary, hard drive space is decimal, CD capacity is binary, DVD capacity is decimal, ethernet speed is decimal, and that a 1.44 MB floppy is neither binary nor decimal is preposterous.

True, standardizing does mean that someone's favorite definition has to lose. Let me offer you a tissue so you can cry about it.

[Brien]

I hope there's a way to change it to base 2, that's how it's supposed to be

Smartest would be both. Like so: 320GB (297GB).

[AidenShaw]

Smartest would be both. Like so: 320GB (297GB).

Surely you meant Like so: 320GB (297GiB). ;)

Giving someone two numbers without any clue as to the difference between them would not be smart.

[oncdoc]

I Just Love Threads Like This One.:d

As I click through the pages of this thread, I think to myself what an utter waste of time. But I can't help continuing on. Only one more page left.

[GenesisST]

Why would you want automatic transmission on a Ferrari? :eek:

If I had enough money, I would have a Ferrari with winter tires and hitch for a trailer... Probably with a sticker for the Brazilian soccer (not football!) team.

Just because I could... :)

[NT1440]

So this thread basically became another "apple switches to base 10 blah blah" thread?

[Michael Belisle]

So this thread basically became another "apple switches to base 10 blah blah" thread?

Well, would you rather we be discussing the merits of automatic time-zone correction or system-wide spell correction? I know, they're such controversial topics, ripe for Internet arguing.

[xrayzed]

So this thread basically became another "apple switches to base 10 blah blah" thread?
As this is my first "Apple switches to base 10" thread I've actually found the discussion interesting.

I came into the thread thinking "pointless change", but the pro-base 10 crowd have convinced me. I think they have the more persuasive arguments.

[doug in albq]

I guess we could have talked about Snow Leopard in this thread...?

P.S. Again, there is no Font Smoothing options in SL, which is vastly more important that debating counting systems....LOL.

7 pages of thread drift...............................

[Michael Belisle]

The pro-base 10 crowd have convinced me. I think they have the more persuasive arguments.

I started the day neutral. Then the base-10 crowd convinced me that it's a better and more consistent terminology, and backed by the support of the (evil) standards organizations (who also say we should use SI in America. SI! In America!).

Then I noticed that the status quo is entrenched and numerous and, standards bodies excepted, have successfully quelled past rebellions. The opinion of the detractors is also compelling: despite the persistent confusion and inconsistent usage, it's been this way for a long time and, despite a lawsuit here and there, computers still work. The world is used to the fable that the hard drive manufactures are crooks. After reading a bunch of threads, it appears that most people that care want it to stay the way it is. It's an uphill fight.

Personally, I hope Apple is actually going to fight this fight. It's time.

[darijoe]

I see that the human characteristics are coming through loud and clear in this thread - that we don't like change.

Like what others have said before me here, the change to base 10 is for the better! It's a change that is correcting something that was wrong; what can be bad about that??? Base 2 has been plaguing the PC industry for decades and it has been referred to in base 10 units by the OS manufacturers. We should have been talking about file sizes that were mebibytes big rather than megabytes big all these years.

It is NOT "supposed" to be base 2. It COULD be base 2, but if it were, it would supposed to be GiB and not just GB.

Finally there is a group of people, namely the OS X development team at Apple, that is taking the lead in fixing this mistake!

[thegrayrace]

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

As others pointed out, you can hit command-option-i to get a floating window of selected items which will display total size and number of items. You can also hit command-control-i to get an ordinary "Get Info" window with a summary of all selected items (same as if you right click to the contextual menu holding control, "Get Info" will become "Get Summary Info"). Lock/unlock, label, and sharing/permissions can be adjusted for multiple items in these windows.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Type command-j in the Finder. You can choose to have icons automatically arranged by name, kind (my preference), size, date, etc. Or you can simply have them automatically snap to grid.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

MY GOD. I completely agree with you on this one. Absolutely the most frustrating thing I have to deal with in the Finder. I have a HUGE media collection, well over 1TB, and I'm constantly organizing/renaming video files. Every single time I have a new folder of videos, I have to go disable the "Show icon preview" in View Options. SO FREAKING ANNOYING. They better change this in Snow Leopard (they should've already fixed it in a Leopard update). But, if you didn't know, command-j again, View Options, allows you to disable the preview feature (but it only applies to the particular folder you are changing the setting for).

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

They definitely need to improve moving/copying files and folders in the Finder, no doubt. Especially over networks and in dealing with less than perfect storage devices. Working at a service center and having to deal with a lot of intermittently failing hard drives, I have to force quit the Finder all the time because it completely freaks out whenever it has trouble accessing a file. And if you've successfully copied some data, you can't continue where you left off... you can choose to overwrite folders or not, but if a copy failed half way through items in a particular folder, you have to figure out exactly which point it failed at, then manually find the missing files and copy them yourself. Sometimes it'll error out just because of incorrect file permissions, and again you have to search manually to figure out at which point the copy failed, and which particular file is giving you problems... completely lame.

[singhjeet29]

So was that "you gain 6GB after installing Snow Leopard" a lie? and how exactly will this work, if I download an application from the internet which is 297Mb is it going to show up on my system as 320MB (using the same numbers so i don't have to do any conversions my self :p)

[pmd]

I'm working with the mouse, i should have all the options in my mouse hand. I don't want to find the i key with my mouse hand because my next step will be to bring my hand back on the mouse and find the cursor then find the close button once i have gotten my information and my hand back on the mouse.

You don't need to take your hand off the mouse - Get Info is in the Finder's File menu. Also, select the Finder's File menu - see what happens to the Get Info item when you press the Option key? What about when you press the Control key? Lots of Finder features alter by pressing the modifier keys, and you can see what they do by watching the menu items.



However, that is how it currently works with the finder. Pressing cmd-i gives you a new window that you have take care of - how stupid.

I believe that window is what's called an Inspector window. You can close it by hitting the Escape key.

[intel]

As others pointed out, you can hit command-option-i to get a floating window of selected items which will display total size and number of items. You can also hit command-control-i to get an ordinary "Get Info" window with a summary of all selected items (same as if you right click to the contextual menu holding control, "Get Info" will become "Get Summary Info"). Lock/unlock, label, and sharing/permissions can be adjusted for multiple items in these windows.



Type command-j in the Finder. You can choose to have icons automatically arranged by name, kind (my preference), size, date, etc. Or you can simply have them automatically snap to grid.



MY GOD. I completely agree with you on this one. Absolutely the most frustrating thing I have to deal with in the Finder. I have a HUGE media collection, well over 1TB, and I'm constantly organizing/renaming video files. Every single time I have a new folder of videos, I have to go disable the "Show icon preview" in View Options. SO FREAKING ANNOYING. They better change this in Snow Leopard (they should've already fixed it in a Leopard update). But, if you didn't know, command-j again, View Options, allows you to disable the preview feature (but it only applies to the particular folder you are changing the setting for).



They definitely need to improve moving/copying files and folders in the Finder, no doubt. Especially over networks and in dealing with less than perfect storage devices. Working at a service center and having to deal with a lot of intermittently failing hard drives, I have to force quit the Finder all the time because it completely freaks out whenever it has trouble accessing a file. And if you've successfully copied some data, you can't continue where you left off... you can choose to overwrite folders or not, but if a copy failed half way through items in a particular folder, you have to figure out exactly which point it failed at, then manually find the missing files and copy them yourself. Sometimes it'll error out just because of incorrect file permissions, and again you have to search manually to figure out at which point the copy failed, and which particular file is giving you problems... completely lame.

Nice of you to open your eyes and agree with me on the other points that I made, but still this comand alt shift control bullshyte while you click and sit on one bum cheek and sticking your tongue up your nose for somethin that Microsoft worked out without you having to click anything but just look at the screen leaves me wanting to switch to windows to do my file browsing. Apple has seriously failed with finder and they insisted at wwdc that they love finder and won't change any bit of it DOUBLE FAIL
FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL
Finder = FAIL

I'm passionate about this being fixed, can you tell? and please, unless there are "BETTER" features in finder than in explorer or even the file browsers that linux uses, i will ignore you. every other file browser on the market have the basic essential features that i talked about in my other post - which means it's pretty much a standard - that makes finder sub standard and lacking severely.

[H$R]

So was that "you gain 6GB after installing Snow Leopard" a lie?


If it turns out to be a lie..that would be false advertising. They better don't ******* with us. But we'll buy it anyway :cool:

and how exactly will this work, if I download an application from the internet which is 297Mb is it going to show up on my system as 320MB (using the same numbers so i don't have to do any conversions my self :p)

I think it will be like this yes.

I mean the webserver would count it it's way and your OS the otherway round.

[dragossh]

Just wanted to correct this…

What is Windows? It still uses technology based on Windows 2.X and 3.X. It still uses arcane DOS commands and overlays - although with many more refinements and updates.

Nope. Windows NT has nothing to do with Windows 9x. It’s a completely different system, like OS X is different than OS 9. NT just happened to share the same userland with 9x.

[trondah]

Only the Mach Kernel is BSD, the Userland is Darwin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)

Check your facts guys, the kernel is XNU, which in turn is based on Mach 3.0 (not BSD) and components from 4.3BSD and FreeBSD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xnu

There's plenty of BSD userland in Darwin as well. I don't see how that makes OSX a "pretty GUI on top of BSD" though.

If you think the userland is such a huge part of the OS then you completely and utterly fail.

[lamadude]

Nice of you to open your eyes and agree with me on the other points that I made, but still this comand alt shift control bullshyte while you click and sit on one bum cheek and sticking your tongue up your nose for somethin that Microsoft worked out without you having to click anything but just look at the screen leaves me wanting to switch to windows to do my file browsing. Apple has seriously failed with finder and they insisted at wwdc that they love finder and won't change any bit of it DOUBLE FAIL
FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL
Finder = FAIL


I agree, just even thinking about how horrible finder is and how apple doesn't realise it makes me angry. Luckily I don't need to manipulate files very often but if I did I surely would move away from OSX.

[windywoo]

If you set them up correctly then it will.. er... be set up correctly! ;)

OSX when you first launch it asks which keyboard language you want. Being in the UK I choose British English as my primary language. :rolleyes:

When it first launches it asks two questions, "What region are you in." and "What keyboard are you using?". I expected the first question to determine how Safari displays webpages, not the second, considering my iBook is imported.

[ddTaylor]

Just wanted to correct this…



Nope. Windows NT has nothing to do with Windows 9x. It’s a completely different system, like OS X is different than OS 9. NT just happened to share the same userland with 9x.

When I received my CNE and MCSE we were told differently as do many OS books as they are ALL based on the same underlay. I am not arguing that they are identical but they all share the same lineage. Are they the same? NO! Are they still based on overlay and arcane commands that date back to Windows 95 and Windows 2.X? YES!

D

[diamond.g]

When I received my CNE and MCSE we were told differently as do many OS books as they are ALL based on the same underlay. I am not arguing that they are identical but they all share the same lineage. Are they the same? NO! Are they still based on overlay and arcane commands that date back to Windows 95 and Windows 2.X? YES!

D

Wait, so Win 9x and Win NT share the same kernel (underlay)? I figured they share the same GUI, but that was it. The underlying technology was different.

[AidenShaw]

Nope. Windows NT has nothing to do with Windows 9x. It’s a completely different system, like OS X is different than OS 9. NT just happened to share the same userland with 9x.

When I received my CNE and MCSE we were told differently as do many OS books as they are ALL based on the same underlay. I am not arguing that they are identical but they all share the same lineage. Are they the same? NO! Are they still based on overlay and arcane commands that date back to Windows 95 and Windows 2.X? YES!

D

Wait, so Win 9x and Win NT share the same kernel (underlay)? I figured they share the same GUI, but that was it. The underlying technology was different.

The NT kernel and native userland have nothing to do with DOS/Win9x.

The Win32 APIs (from 9x) are a layer on top of native NT, and implement what was initially compatible with the 9x APIs, so that the Windows GUI and 9x applications could be re-hosted on NT without much effort. (By now, the NT Win32 API set has evolved - taking a recent NT program back to 9x would be very difficult.)

In the early days, NT supported a POSIX layer and an OS/2 layer on top of native NT. Those have fallen away due to lack of use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem

There's no DOS in NT. There is a command shell - a userland program that interprets a superset of the DOS commands that were supported by DOS/9x. Several other shells exist for NT - PowerShell, VBS, bash, tsh, .... Like any shell on a UNIX or other system, these are just userland command interpreters written to the APIs underneath. While you can type a command that looks like a DOS command into the shell, there's no DOS behind the shell - just an NT userland program that parses the commands and calls the Win32 APIs to get the desired effect.

The "native APIs" for NT are undocumented, although much is known about them.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/410D6QSST2L._SS500_.jpg http://www.amazon.com/Windows-2000-Native-API-Reference/dp/1578701996

[mothy]

Oh goodie! I've been waiting YEARS for this feature!

Give or take an hour.

[kuribohbabylon]

So was that "you gain 6GB after installing Snow Leopard" a lie? and how exactly will this work, if I download an application from the internet which is 297Mb is it going to show up on my system as 320MB (using the same numbers so i don't have to do any conversions my self :p)

I think the 6 Gig coming back is at least partially due to the removal of fat binaries in favor of Intel only binaries.

[lamadude]

I think the 6 Gig coming back is at least partially due to the removal of fat binaries in favor of Intel only binaries.

I think so too, and the GB vs GiB confusion wouldn't make that much of a difference. 6GB is 5.59 GiB

[dragossh]

The NT kernel and native userland have nothing to do with DOS/Win9x.

The userland was almost the same. Explorer, IE, etc.

[AidenShaw]

The userland was almost the same. Explorer, IE, etc.

The native userland in NT has nothing to do with the 16-bit and 16/32-bit worlds of DOS and Win9x.

The Win32 subsystem is a native layer that implements the Win32 API set. Any 32-bit Win32 app sits above this layer.

You are right that the Win32 applications in early versions of NT were similar or identical to the Win9x applications. Obvious, since complete binary compatibility was a goal of the Win32 subsystem.

I said "native" though. "Win32" is a "persona" layered on top of NT - it's not real NT.

If you have some familiarity with NT's architecture you are probably aware that the API that Win32 applications use isn't the "real" NT API.

NT's operating environments, which include POSIX, OS/2 and Win32, talk to their client applications via their own APIs, but talk to NT using the NT "native" API. The native API is mostly undocumented, with only about 25 of its 250 functions described in the Windows NT Device Driver Kit.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897447.aspx

[samssf]

it's kind of stupid to switch from base 2 to base 10. it actually IS base 2 and apple won't change that.

however, the fact that most users still think 1024 = 1000 may have driven apple to that step...

False. It *really is* base 10.

A megabyte = 1000 kilobytes. A mebibyte = 1024 kilobytes. The hard disk manufactures have actually been calculating it correctly, and OSes have been calculating disk space incorrectly.

[AidenShaw]

False. It *really is* base 10.

A megabyte = 1000 kilobytes. A mebibyte = 1024 kibibytes. The hard disk manufactures have actually been calculating it correctly, and OSes have been calculating disk space incorrectly.

fixed... ;)

[ddTaylor]

Wait, so Win 9x and Win NT share the same kernel (underlay)? I figured they share the same GUI, but that was it. The underlying technology was different.

I should clarify - I did not say they were the same but they ARE evolutionary changes to the same basic underlay - albeit with changes. The OS is not a radical departure from ANY of the windows versions - they all still use registries, they all access the files is similar way and journal files in similar ways - the kernels ARE different but they are still based on the same principals ALL version of windows are - GUI and UNDERLAY. I repeat - they are NOT the same but they are NOT radical departures form the original Windows 95 iteration. Is that bad? I do not know - but OS X IS a radical departure from OS 9 and all other variants before.

NT is a bit of a different story but it still owes much of its lineage to 95 et all..

D

[ddTaylor]

Just wanted to correct this…



Nope. Windows NT has nothing to do with Windows 9x. It’s a completely different system, like OS X is different than OS 9. NT just happened to share the same userland with 9x.

That is what I said! I never said they were the same but they DO share many features and many similarities in operation. They share more than just the GUI and user underlay. I NEVER posted the kernels were the same but they share much of the same methodology. NT was a departure from 95 et all but it was not revolutionary as they still handle many operations the SAME WAY albeit with different code and operations - the process is close enough to owe its heritage to the 95 days. OS X does NOT owe anything from OS 9. It was a clean slate with no preconceptions or rules to abide by.

D

[AidenShaw]

NT is a bit of a different story but it still owes much of its lineage to 95 et all..

D

NT was a departure from 95 et all but it was not revolutionary as they still handle many operations the SAME WAY albeit with different code and operations - the process is close enough to owe its heritage to the 95 days.

Interesting - but how do you explain the fact that NT was released in 1992 - 3 years before the Windows 95 that you claim NT descends from? :eek:

Correction: NT was released in July 1993, two years before the August 1995 release of Windows 95. I had Alpha and Beta versions in 1992, and confused the date.

[duck apple]

its really funny that all u guys are freaking about this.... its really not that big a deal..... and itmay be the first step to getting other os's to do the same.... personally i look forward to my TB drives showing 1TB rather then 931MB

The problem is that you can't physically store your data in 10-based size. The minimum read/write unit of a hard disk, sector, is 512 bytes; the situation is worsen in that, for efficiency reason, most file systems under the sun use at least 2KB (4 sectors) as the minimum allocation unit for storing a single data chunk, meaning that you got 2KB (4 sectors, 2048 bytes) less of disk space after saving a file of 1 byte or 2000 byte.

You see, 2-based representation of disk space and file size is a lot to the reality. You 1TB disk is actually 931MB.

[Krafty]

You 1TB disk is actually 931MB.
"Then where did my 9069MB of space go?"

[duck apple]

That's a man-made artificial distinction. As a matter of fact, sectors on a NAND Flash chip (for example) physically contain a (power-of-two + some overhead) number of bytes. For example, instead of 512 bytes (2^9), a typical NAND Flash sector (the smallest physically addressable and erasable space within the hardware structure) might contain 528 bytes. Of this space, filesystem formatting and error correction will take up some or all of these extra 16 bytes, leaving about 512 bytes available for data.

So you see, the power-of-two groupings are already quite arbitrarily chosen. In general, when you're talking about mass file storage, whether you choose to represent those bytes as being grouped together in base-2 sized clumps or base-10 sized clumps is not based on any physical reality. As long as the chosen definition is publicized clearly to the user, and deployed consistently within any given operating environment, I frankly don't care what definition they use.



You are totally wrong.

You have no sense of 'binary' in just the same way that most computers have no sense of denary.

In a word, if the disk space can't be read/write in unit of 500 bytes, 1000 byte or 1,000,000 bytes, what is the reasoning of presenting disk space in power of 10?

[duck apple]

Are you serious?? The list is huge
Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files ...

Those are mostly true but I would say, with all of these advantages of it, Windows Explorer is no better than Finder in serious house keeping; both sucks.

Yes, for this 'daunting' task of house keeping my own data, I need to fire up VMWare Fusion to boot up my loved Kubuntu Linux for running Konqueror or Krusader or 'Midnight Commander'.

[duck apple]

On a technical note, "cut" is a move operation, not a delete/create operation (as it may seem). When you cut/paste a file, all the system does is change the reference pointer. The actual file on on the drive is unmoved. Another reason why there is no way it could be lost.

Does it work the same way when you 'move' file between folders on the same networked drive (from 'z:\folderA' to 'z:\folderB')?

[duck apple]

Actually, it is not. Computer memory is the only area where the letters K, M and G have been incorrectly used to mean 1,024, 1,024 x 1,024 and 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024. [/url]
Where does the system need to know about base 2? I think the system doesn't actually care.
You don't know what you are saying.

Everything in most computer systems is binary based, down to CPU instruction set, code/data register, cache and bus.

Disk plate is also binary based, from sector size to cylinder number. Why, because the controller, buffer cache and bus are all binary-based.

Mind you, most embedded controller, as those used in a disk, knows nothing about decimal thing. For example, you need to be very good at programming in assembly language of the target CPU to perform multiplication or division in decimal.

At the lowest level, you will have a byte offset relative to the start of the hard drive; that needs to be translated into a platter/track/sector number, which is quite complicated because the number of sectors per track is different from track to track. There is no need for binary arithmetic at all.
All those calculation are simple binary 'calculation' like shifting or rotating left/right of bits around and a few inefficient add/subtract if absolutely needed.
The rule of thumb in OS level programming is to stick to binary calculation.

[duck apple]

I've written up a little rant about the base-10 change (http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/e/2009/06/22-base10_file_sizes.php) (spoiler: I think it's a good thing).

Your reasoning: "Okay, so the "real" storage space taken by a 123456789-byte file is actually 123457536 bytes, but that's still a lot closer to 123.4MB than it is to 117.7MB!"

Why the file manager have to present a file of this size in byte? Why not just said it's 117.7 MB at the first place?

And what about 1000 or 10,000 of JPEG files of 200,000 byte each? You can't simply multiply 1000 by 200K to get the total required disk space.

[ddTaylor]

Interesting - but how do you explain the fact that NT was released in 1992 - 3 years before the Windows 95 that you claim NT descends from? :eek:

Correction: NT was released in July 1993, two years before the August 1995 release of Windows 95. I had Alpha and Beta versions in 1992, and confused the date.

Fair enough - but you do see my point - correct? I did forget about THAT version of NT and was thinking of the later versions. Anyway - the way NT, Windows 95 et all handles things like networking traffic, stacks, underlay and even the basic art of how the OS communicates with the hardware using the same basic hardware interface.

It has been a LONG TIME since I have done anything serious or any programming on any Windows platform - but from what I remember NT through XP all had the same basic GUI (sans the ORIGINAL NT) and hardware interface and if was similar in the API's, registry and others. I did not ever say they were the same - all you can do (and everyone else) is pick apart my every sentence yet not comment on the basic premise of my argument. The entire lineage of Windows owes itself to its predecessor - as EVOLUTIONARY and not REVOLUTIONARY. I would argue that OS X from OS 9 was REVOLUTIONARY for Apple but EVOLUTIONARY for the user base as it owes MUCH of itself to BSD and Darwin and the Mach Kernel are ALL VARIANTS of BSD - period...although evolutionary enhancements.

That was the only point I was trying to make - I am FAR from an expert on Windows but I was heavily certiied and worked for many large Fortune 500 companies and even the DoD so I feel confident in the premise of my argument - even though I may not remember every minute detail on Win.

D

[AidenShaw]

The problem is that you can't physically store your data in 10-based size. The minimum read/write unit of a hard disk, sector, is 512 bytes; the situation is worsen in that, for efficiency reason, most file systems under the sun use at least 2KB (4 sectors) as the minimum allocation unit for storing a single data chunk, meaning that you got 2KB (4 sectors, 2048 bytes) less of disk space after saving a file of 1 byte or 2000 byte.

You see, 2-based representation of disk space and file size is a lot to the reality. You 1TB disk is actually 931MB.

I think that your argument is silly.

You realize that you're discussing the difference between 0.9999999980 TB and 0.9999999980 TB, right? (In other words, the numbers are the same even when you use 10 decimal places of precision.)

Similarly, one allocation unit is about 0.01% of the size of a 5 MB music file. Again, you'll need lots of decimal places to tell the difference.

And what about file-related meta-data? Currently that overhead is hidden by most systems. If you look at the total size of the files, you'll see that they're smaller than the total space used on the disk. This means that the current listings are already quite inaccurate.

And, to make your case even weaker, isn't the size reported today in binary the actual length of the data in the file, not the allocated size of the file? If any file is shown as anything but even multiples of the 4KiB default allocation block, then it is the actual (decimal) length that's being reported (albeit divided by some power of two to be mis-represented as Kilo or Mega or Giga). Every time you see a 1KiB, 2KiB or 3KiB file - OSX is hiding the "wasted" space in the allocation block. What does it matter if it is hidden in power of 2 or power of 10?

By the way, Windows doesn't use an allocation unit for small files - if the file is small it can be stored entirely with the meta-data, so that your 2KiB rounding error is gone. (For NTFS, the default allocation unit is also 4 KiB.)

I think that it is wrong to misuse a term like Kilo or Giga that is recognized by many international standards bodies, when simply adding a lower-case "i" to the abbreviation brings it into compliance. I think that Apple is doing the right thing to shift to decimal to match the storage and networking and processor people. Let's push to see DIMMs sold in GiB, and caches in MiB, and have truth in labeling.

By the way, did you know that the typical Ethernet packet is 1500 bytes, and 802.11 WiFi uses 2272 byte packets? What does that do to the "computers only know binary" arguments? And what about punched cards - shouldn't they have been 64 or 128 columns instead of 80? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTU_(networking)


Fair enough - but you do see my point - correct? I did forget about THAT version of NT and was thinking of the later versions. Anyway - the way NT, Windows 95 et all handles things like networking traffic, stacks, underlay and even the basic art of how the OS communicates with the hardware using the same basic hardware interface.

No, I do not agree with your point.

Try to install a Windows 95 device driver on any version of NT - you'll find that "the OS communicates with the hardware using the same basic hardware interface" is only true in the sense that "OSX and Vista communicate with the hardware using the same basic hardware interface". Of course they use the same hardware interface - it's hardware!

The networking stacks are quite different as well. Some protocols are shared (CIFS, for example), but the code is very different.

By the way, what do you mean by the term "underlay"? I'm not familiar with that word used as a noun in operating system context, and web searches for '"operating system" underlay' didn't show any technical definition of the term.


The entire lineage of Windows owes itself to its predecessor - as EVOLUTIONARY and not REVOLUTIONARY. I would argue that OS X from OS 9 was REVOLUTIONARY for Apple but EVOLUTIONARY for the user base as it owes MUCH of itself to BSD and Darwin and the Mach Kernel are ALL VARIANTS of BSD - period...although evolutionary enhancements.

Would you not consider that the break from 16-bit DOS and Windows 3.1 to 32-bit Windows NT was a REVOLUTIONARY step for Microsoft? The entire system was replaced with a completely new design that from the very beginning ran on multiple CPU architectures (x86/Alpha/MIPS/N10 initially, then x64/Itanium/SPARC/PowerPC later).

It had a compatibility layer (NTVDM) that was to the user similar to Classic, so that existing programs would run fine. It had a personality layer with a new set of APIs (Win32) that was an extension of the old APIs (again, echoes of Carbon).

The NT operating system doesn't owe anything to any previous Microsoft OS - it started from a clean slate. (Contrast to OSX, which was a port of NextStep with a Mac-like GUI added on.)

Also note that in some ways Windows95 is a descendent of NT - Windows95 implemented NT's Win32 API set on a hybrid 16/32 bit system.

[AidenShaw]

Oh boy, check this Cnet story. I wonder how Apple will respond...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10272259-56.html?tag=mncol

"That truly is a price that we have never even come close to in terms of an operating system release," Corporate Vice President Brad Brooks said. "We've still got a business to run."

Of course, even at the preorder price, Microsoft still finds itself undercut by Apple, which has said it will only charge $29 for Leopard users moving to Snow Leopard (those on older versions of the Mac OS will have to buy a full-boxed copy combining Leopard and Snow Leopard).

Brooks, however, said that comparing the two upgrades is unfair.

"Even their chief software architect called (Snow Leopard) an upgrade of Leopard," Brooks said. "The way I look at it, it's a service pack and we don't charge for service packs."

Microsoft also confirmed, as expected, that a program offering Vista PC buyers a free copy of Windows 7 will kick off on Friday.

[Mr. Wonderful]

Oh boy, check this Cnet story...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10272259-56.html?tag=mncol

And you're just as bad by posting it here. Who cares?

[Eidorian]

Oh boy, check this Cnet story. I wonder how Apple will respond...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10272259-56.html?tag=mncolThat's quite the surprising statement.

[SleepyHead157]

Snow leopard looks amazing and its supposed to take up less hard drive space than os x leopard. I can't wait till it gets released.