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A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard
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The standard already changed. The IEC, IEEE, ISO, and NIST 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.
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.
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.
No, that is a developer version. The final version that will go on shelves will have the new features.
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.
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.
...only if you use the correct abbreviation
Surely you meant Like so: 320GB (297GiB).
Giving someone two numbers without any clue as to the difference between them would not be smart.
Surely you meant Like so: 320GB (297GiB).
Giving someone two numbers without any clue as to the difference between them would not be smart.
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.
Why would you want automatic transmission on a Ferrari?
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...
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.
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.
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...............................
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...............................
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.
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!
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!
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.
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 )
)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.
I believe that window is what's called an Inspector window. You can close it by hitting the Escape key.
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.
If it turns out to be a lie..that would be false advertising. They better don't f*** with us. But we'll buy it anyway
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
I think it will be like this yes.
I mean the webserver would count it it's way and your OS the otherway round.
Just wanted to correct this
Nope. Windows NT has nothing to do with Windows 9x. Its a completely different system, like OS X is different than OS 9. NT just happened to share the same userland with 9x.
Nope. Windows NT has nothing to do with Windows 9x. Its a completely different system, like OS X is different than OS 9. NT just happened to share the same userland with 9x.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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