Is there any way to change 10.6 so that it is by "1024" instead of "1000"....

[richfiles]

Lets actually find a solution instead of endlessly bickering over terminology

There are a couple of concepts going on in this discussion that are missing the point. Everyone is arguing about the definition of "giga" throughout this, and no one has looked at the definition of "byte". The reason that the way SL is now doing it is wrong, has nothing to do with "giga" and everything to do with "byte". I've worked in the computer industry for nearly 30 years, and other than disk manufacturers, no one has used based 10 because it makes no sense. The hard drive makers did the same thing that the display makers did... found a way to exaggerate the size of their product, so they did it. Display makers used to do the same thing prior to the LCD days.

So a "byte", according to the all knowing Wikipedia is, "most often consists of 8 bits in modern systems". Adding "kilo", "mega", "giga", and "tera" to "byte" yields a base 2 result, not a base 10 result. While the number of bits in a byte does vary, it is never "10", and this goes back to how computer storage is constructed. I worked in chip manufacturing plant for 5 years early in my career and it is ridiculous to even suggest that any thing in computer storage is, or has ever been, based on 10 anythings. All counting internally in computers is done in base 2. So the only conclusion I can make here is that Apple wants to match what the hard drive makers say the size of a drive is, so that is what they are doing. Since they sell drives with their systems, it may be simply a legal issue to try and avoid someone complaining legally that the space they have is now what was advertised. Whatever the reason, it is really awkward and silly for anyone that has been around computers for any length of time. If you try to count things up from bytes, it will completely get messed up every time.... can't get there from here. If you are a systems engineer putting together a storage farm for a big project, this is the kind of crap than can completely screw up project... of course I'm sure they are smart enough to figure out how to work around it.

OK, I agree with the above. Look up "genericism". It refers to trademarks, but can easily apply here. It refers to when a brand or tradmark becomes genericised to the point where the original distinction is lost, and it becomes a generic term that refers a all similar things. Aspirin was once a brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, but generic usage of the word "aspirin" to refer to any brand of acetylsalicylic acid resulted in it's brand being reduced to a genericised word. In a similar way, the SI prefixes have a 40+ year history of being used either or, for both binary (base 2) and decimal (base 10) numbering systems.

While proper terms do exist, they are rarely used by anyone but seeming elitist perfectionists who seem to only like touting how right they are, and how wrong everyone else is.

Instead of debating the reasons, WHICH WE ALL HERE PRETTY MUCH SEEM TO UNDERSTAND, 2 pages later in the forum...

How about we instead try to look into actually solving this little question.

I don't really care how you use or operate or set up your computer. I only care how mine is set up. I count in base 2 when all things computer are related. I have since 1984, when I got my first computer, and always plan to. i have a PowerMac G5 right now, so this issue does not YET effect me directly, but I plan to upgrade to a Mac Pro soon, and I do plan on running Snow Leopard, or whatever it's successor is, if my savings takes long enough to accumulate.

When I use MY computer, I want to use it in a way that I am comfortable with. I want to set MY preferences to the way that I want MY settings to be. It's not an issue of what some sad little elitist forum troll says it should be, but how I want to use and run, and set up MY computer.

Let Apple set their default settings to base 10, for the n00bs that won't care, but LET US have a setting, even in an advanced tab, even a hidden setting, to return us to our traditional, old school, base 2 numbering system.

Instead of bickering over terminology, WHICH WE GET...

Lets actually solve this problem (and hopefully before I have my Mac Pro)

Richfiles

 

[iVoid]

Already a fix to Apple's stupidity:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/777991/