A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard

[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 (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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

Payroll, dollars, hours, etc.

...

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

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?

 

[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. 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...

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