Apple supporting WDL initiative; Mac worldwide share; iPod suit

[AppleInsider]

Apple is amongst a handful of tech companies pitching their support to a multinational effort to create a free international digital world library. Meanwhile, Piper Jaffray weighs in with estimates on the Mac platform's worldwide market share growth. And Apple has been hit with another lawsuit -- this time over iPod storage capacity.

Apple aiding World Digital Library effort

Reporters in Paris got a peek Wednesday at a prototype for the World Digital Library -- an online initiative by the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.N. cultural body UNESCO and other international partner libraries, which has also garnered the support of tech heavyweights Apple, Intel, and Google.

"Listen to a former American slave tell his story. Turn the pages of a book about ancient treasures from Egypt," reads a description of the concept by the Associated Press. "Pore over old maps written in Latin."

Modeled after the Library of Congress' American Memory project, the international digital library will be free and multilingual, with contributions from around the world, including rare books, films, prints, sound recordings and musical scores.

Google has pitched $3 million into the initiative while Apple and Intel are also taking supportive roles. Representatives for Intel were on hand at UNESCO's Paris headquarters Wednesday to show how the prototype worked on its child-focused Classmate PC, and Apple employees brought along mobile devices for demonstrations.

"We have provided (the project with) expertise about how to digitize documents, how to do it for less money, how to handle and sort digital content and make it accessible," said Herve Marchet, Apple's director of education markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Aimed for a 2008 launch, the digital library's five other partner institutions are Egypt's Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Egypt, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library.

Mac's worldwide market share estimates

With market research firms Gartner and IDC releasing somewhat uneven third-quarter U.S. market share estimates for Apple's Mac platform on Wednesday, investment bank Piper Jaffray has turn its attention towards quantifying the company's worldwide share gains.

Using IDC's preliminary release of worldwide PC unit sales in the September quarter -- which did not list Apple because of its marginal share -- analyst Gene Munster in a research note Thursday said he believes the Cupertino-based company's Mac platform achieved market share growth between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent quarter-over-quarter.

"Specifically, IDC estimates that 66.85 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the September quarter. We believe Apple will report Mac unit sales of 2.1 million to 2.2 million for the September quarter," he explained. "At 2.1 million units, Mac market share would be 3.1 percent and at 2.2 million units Mac market share would be 3.3 percent."

Apple's Mac market share in the June quarter was 3.0 percent, up from 2.5 percent in the March quarter. IDC data for total worldwide PC shipments will be slightly revised within the next several weeks as final data is reported, but likely will not see a material enough change to alter September Mac market share percentages, the analyst added.

Apple sued over iPod storage capacity claims

Meanwhile, Montreal law student David Bitton is peeved at Apple for what he claims is misleading marketing. When he found that his new iPod nano came out-of-the-box with only 7.45 GB of available capacity rather than the 8 GB advertised, he sued.

According to the Montreal Gazette, the complaint filed Wednesday in Quebec Superior Court alleges that all Apple products have on average 7.5 percent less storage than advertised. So Bitton is asking for a full refund for himself and all iPod owners in Quebec.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[backtomac]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

So Bitton is asking for a full refund for himself and all iPod owners in Quebec.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Good luck pal.

FSJ has responded through his lawyers and his reply: SIOOMA

[neven]

My Maxtor disk has 6.85% less available space than advertised.
My Seagate disk, 7% less.
The WD, 6.9%.
The Toshiba laptop (from work, I didn't buy it, I swear!), 7% less.

That's not including the OS on any of them. I guess I'll be busy preparing lawsuits for the next few years.

[razorpit]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Montreal law student David Bitton is peeved at Apple for what he claims is misleading marketing. When he found that his new iPod nano came out-of-the-box with only 7.45 GB of available capacity rather than the 8 GB advertised, he sued.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Law student sues. Surprise, surprise. Shouldn't he be doing something more important like studying insteading of stupid lawsuits?

From Apple's website;
"1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less"

I would be pretty scared if I found out a guy this dumb was representining me in court.

[spike41615]

this is honestly getting ridiculous. In todays society, people sue others for EVERYTHING. It is a well known common fact that ALL storage media has less on it after formatting. This guy is a complete moron and just looking for money cause hes either 1) to lazy to get off his ass and work, or 2) looking for attention. God, get your head out of the clouds and your thumb out of your ass.

[Mr. H]

Oh jeez, not another one of those "advertised storage space doesn't equal actual storage space" lawsuits.

You know what would really help? Is if Apple and Microsoft actually used in their OSes the de-facto binary prefixes as defined in IEEE 1541-2002.

Originally Posted by neven

My Maxtor disk has 6.85% less available space than advertised.
My Seagate disk, 7% less.
The WD, 6.9%.
The Toshiba laptop (from work, I didn't buy it, I swear!), 7% less.

No, they don't. They have exactly the storage they are advertised to have. It's just that when your OS says that it has x GB available, it is wrong. It should say it has x GiB available. A GB does not equal a GiB, and that is where most of the discrepancy comes from, not from "formatting".

[SpinDrift]

Meanwhile, Montreal law student David Bitton is peeved at Apple for what he claims is misleading marketing. When he found that his new iPod nano came out-of-the-box with only 7.45 GB of available capacity rather than the 8 GB advertised, he sued.

What a wanktard.

[Thomaspin]

Apple Insider (and its fellow influential Apple blogs) would do a great service for all satisfied Apple users and stockholders were it to publish the names, addresses and emails of these petty tort abusers and their counsel. This would permit users to inundate these ethically challened people with suitably worded emails. It might not fix the problem but it would feel really, really good.

[SpinDrift]

I can't just leave it at that, I have to say more!

Any normal person, if they really did feel let down that they don't get the full 8GB of storage would just take the iPod back for a refund. But no, this little upstart, being a legal student wants to go out and get what he can, perhaps even try and make himself look good (or feel better for not getting laid in collage like everyone else). In fact, he probably bought it purposely seeing as nobody has been low enough to try and sue for such a retarded reason. I hope he gets raped by Apple Legal!

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Oh jeez, not another one of those "advertised storage space doesn't equal actual storage space" lawsuits.

You know what would really help? Is if Apple and Microsoft actually used in their OSes the de-facto binary prefixes as defined in IEEE 1541-2002.



No, they don't. They have exactly the storage they are advertised to have. It's just that when your OS says that it has x GB available, it is wrong. It should say it has x GiB available. A GB does not equal a GiB, and that is where most of the discrepancy comes from, not from "formatting".

No. The advertised capacity is on a non-formatted drive. When the drive is formatted in compliance with ISO standards then depending on any bad sectors of the drive during stamping it will produce a varying amount of actual byte space available.

1024 bytes per kilobyte compounded up to megabytes, to gigabytes then terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, etc., is a different binary file size nomenclature.

End result: This is a lawyer needs more of a science background before he passes the bar.

[fraklinc]

If he wins any thing from that law sue am goin to gather all my stuff together and goin to start suing companies left and right

[Wiggin]

Didn't we already go through this a couple of years ago with hard drive space? Perhaps this law student, and his lawyers, should take a walk across campus to the engineering building, find a CompSci major, and ask them the difference between how storage capacity and memory are measured.

Historically, memory (RAM) has always mis-used the metric prefixes. Kilo (k) means 10^3 (ie, 1000), and that's the way storage capacity has always been measured. But for RAM, kilo means 1024, because they were too lazy to come up with their own prefix and noticed that 1024 is "close" to 1000. But bump that up a couple of orders of magnitude, and it's no longer close.

G(storage) = 10^9 = 1000^3 = 1,000,000,000
G(RAM) = 1024^3 = 1,073,741,824

And there you have it, you "missing" 7.37%!

[DeaPeaJay]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Oh jeez, not another one of those "advertised storage space doesn't equal actual storage space" lawsuits.

You know what would really help? Is if Apple and Microsoft actually used in their OSes the de-facto binary prefixes as defined in IEEE 1541-2002.



No, they don't. They have exactly the storage they are advertised to have. It's just that when your OS says that it has x GB available, it is wrong. It should say it has x GiB available. A GB does not equal a GiB, and that is where most of the discrepancy comes from, not from "formatting".

Are you *seriously* suggesting that Apple start measuring the capacity of their drives by GiBs rather than GBs?

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Wiggin

Didn't we already go through this a couple of years ago with hard drive space? Perhaps this law student, and his lawyers, should take a walk across campus to the engineering building, find a CompSci major, and ask them the difference between how storage capacity and memory are measured.

Historically, memory (RAM) has always mis-used the metric prefixes. Kilo (k) means 10^3 (ie, 1000), and that's the way storage capacity has always been measured. But for RAM, kilo means 1024, because they were too lazy to come up with their own prefix and noticed that 1024 is "close" to 1000. But bump that up a couple of orders of magnitude, and it's no longer close.

G(storage) = 10^9 = 1000^3 = 1,000,000,000
G(RAM) = 1024^3 = 1,073,741,824

And there you have it, you "missing" 7.37%!

In other words, HDD manufacturers uses BASE-10 for marketing while RAM and NAND use BASE-2. both are factual depending on how you look at it.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

No. The advertised capacity is on a non-formatted drive. When the drive is formatted in compliance with ISO standards then depending on any bad sectors of the drive during stamping it will produce a varying amount of actual byte space available.

Maybe I mis-used the word "exactly", but I am correct in stating that the majority of the discrepancy comes from the fact that the HDD manufacturers use the GB prefix correctly, and the OS manufacturers (Apple and Microsoft) do not.

If a drive is 8 GB, it can store 8,000,000,000 bytes. This is equal to 7.45 GiB. Hey, look at that! That's what iTunes/Windows/OS X/whatever, is telling this guy is available on his iPod. Except it's telling him that it's 7.45 GB, which is wrong. It is 8 GB, or 7.45 GiB.

To one decimal place, this guy is getting exactly the advertised storage space.

[Wiggin]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

No. The advertised capacity is on a non-formatted drive. When the drive is formatted in compliance with ISO standards then depending on any bad sectors of the drive during stamping it will produce a varying amount of actual byte space available.

1024 bytes per kilobyte compounded up to megabytes, to gigabytes then terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, etc., is a different binary file size nomenclature.

End result: This is a lawyer needs more of a science background before he passes the bar.

You are correct that formatting does reduce available capacity (bad sectors, space for the directory, etc), but it is a very, very minor lose. But in terms of absolute, unformatted capacity, most hard drives (not sure about flash memory) actually have slightly more than the stated amount. The missing memory this guy is suing about is entirely due to bad math and misconceptions on his part (as you alluded to in your 2nd paragraph).

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by DeaPeaJay

Are you *seriously* suggesting that Apple start measuring the capacity of their drives by GiBs rather than GBs?

No, I am *seriously* suggesting that Apple quotes file sizes in GiB.

Or have a user-selectable preference to show GB (being 10^9) or GiB (being 2^30) numbers.

But the current situation of having GiB numbers and calling them GB is not, IMHO, acceptable.

[Wiggin]

Originally Posted by DeaPeaJay

Are you *seriously* suggesting that Apple start measuring the capacity of their drives by GiBs rather than GBs?

No, I think the suggestion is for them to measure drive capacity in GB, but to do their math correctly!

[fraklinc]

he probabily dont know that although its a 8GB it also was software intall to make the freaking thing work, it will be like buying a car with no engine dum ass you need software to drive the hardrive and also make the ipod work as and ipod, freaking dushbag

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

If a drive is 8 GB, it can store 8,000,000,000 bytes. This is equal to 7.45 GiB. Hey, look at that! That's what iTunes/Windows/OS X/whatever, is telling this guy is available on his iPod. Except it's telling him that it's 7.45 GB, which is wrong. It is 8 GB, or 7.45 GiB.

For anyone that doesn't understand or believe what Mr.H stated, just open up Disk Utility and see for yourself.

[Foo2]

What a maroon!!

[Wiggin]

Originally Posted by solipsism

In other words, HDD manufacturers uses BASE-10 for marketing while RAM and NAND use BASE-8. both are factual depending on how you look at it.

Hmm, actually, I'm not sure how NAND is measured (from a technical standpoint). RAM is actually binary because of the way it's addressed (computer circuitry only knows 1s and 0s). It's just that when they got up to the "massive" memory size of 1024 bytes, someone noticed that it was close to 1000 and decided to [mis]label it a kilobyte. A 2.4% discrepancy, so no big deal.

Then when I put in 4 x 256 kB (1024 byte) RAM sticks into my Mac IIsi , I was sitting pretty with 1024 kB of RAM. Again, 1024 is close to 1000. So it must be a megabyte! Only now the discrepancy is 4.9% (1024x1024=1,048,576)!!

So it's not the hard drive space that is getting measured incorrectly, it's the RAM!

Anyone know how NAND is addressed? Is is binary like RAM, or arbitrary (ie, dependant on the formating) like hard drives?

[djpadz]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Meanwhile, Montreal law student David Bitton is peeved at Apple for what he claims is misleading marketing. When he found that his new iPod nano came out-of-the-box with only 7.45 GB of available capacity rather than the 8 GB advertised, he sued.

I guess there's nothing like establishing yourself as a laughingstock in the legal community before you even get your law degree.

David Bitton, three years from now:

"Why, yes, I think I'd be an asset to this firm."
"I see. Now, looking over your C.V., I see that you brought suit against... Apple, Inc... for what?"
"Well, you see, the hard drives on their iPods..."
"That will be all. Don't call us. We'll call you."

By the way... 8GB refers to the amount of storage inside the device. Apple never claimed that an 8GB iPod would offer 8GB of storage for your music/videos/whatever.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by djpadz

By the way... 8GB refers to the amount of storage inside the device. Apple never claimed that an 8GB iPod would offer 8GB of storage for your music/videos/whatever.

Try reading my earlier posts. The 8 GB is referring to the amount of space available to the guy to use for music/videos/whatever. A very small amount is used for the iPod OS and "formatting", but to one decimal place, this guy has 8 GB available to use.

[DeaPeaJay]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

No, I am *seriously* suggesting that Apple quotes file sizes in GiB.

Or have a user-selectable preference to show GB (being 10^9) or GiB (being 2^30) numbers.

But the current situation of having GiB numbers and calling them GB is not, IMHO, acceptable.

I just think we've been using GBs for so long now, it would be totally confusing to the public at large if they started calling them GiBs instead, when only geeks know the difference. I don't think it's a "problem" that needs to be addressed.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by Wiggin

Anyone know how NAND is addressed? Is is binary like RAM, or arbitrary (ie, dependant on the formating) like hard drives?

Well, the 8 GB iPod nano uses flash, doesn't it.

It would seem that we have the answer. Flash works like HDDs, not RAM, so the space available on flash advertised as having 8 GB capacity is 8 GB (8,000,000,000 bytes) or 7.45 GiB (also 8,000,000,000 bytes).

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by DeaPeaJay

I just think we've been using GBs for so long now, it would be totally confusing to the public at large if they started calling them GiBs instead, when only geeks know the difference. I don't think it's a "problem" that needs to be addressed.

But people are already confused. Better to treat people like adults rather than to insult their intelligence, and assume they're all too stupid to understand.

Yes, in the short term there would be come confusion, and in the long term confusion would not disappear entirely. But it would reduce to a level lower than it is now.

Do you deny that purchasing an HDD advertised as having 500 GB storage, only to have your OS tell you it's only 465 GB is confusing? Wouldn't it be better for the OS to say either:

That it's 500 GB, and report all file sizes in GB (1,000,000,000 bytes)
That it's 465 GiB, and report all file sizes in GiB

[echosonic]

You had me at "wanktard."

[wraithofwonder]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

But people are already confused. Better to treat people like adults rather than to insult their intelligence, and assume they're all too stupid to understand.

Yes, in the short term there would be come confusion, and in the long term confusion would not disappear entirely. But it would reduce to a level lower than it is now.

Do you deny that purchasing an HDD advertised as having 500 GB storage, only to have your OS tell you it's only 465 GB is confusing? Wouldn't it be better for the OS to say either:

That it's 500 GB, and report all file sizes in GB (1,000,000,000 bytes)
That it's 465 GiB, and report all file sizes in GiB

I agree 100%. I've always felt this way, but have always been afraid to say it - it seems blasphemous to suggest something so damn reasonable!

[KennyWRX]

I just can't believe people can be stupid enough to sue for that.

HDs, RAM, Flash are all measured the same way. They all use a binary representation (1 or 0). The discrepancy lies in using scientific prefixes such as Giga (10^9) vs a the binary counterpart gibi (2^30).

2^30 / 10^9 = 1.0737...

8GB * (1Gi / 1.0737G) = 7.45GiB (...and thats what the computer should report)

[kmkoni]

That's funny.

I look at the back of my iPod box and it says: 1GB=1 billion bytes; formatted capacity less.

Oh, snap. Perhaps he should read his box.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Do you deny that purchasing an HDD advertised as having 500 GB storage, only to have your OS tell you it's only 465 GB is confusing? Wouldn't it be better for the OS to say either:

That it's 500 GB, and report all file sizes in GB (1,000,000,000 bytes)
That it's 465 GiB, and report all file sizes in GiB

The definitions of GB vs. GiB are confusing too. How many people know what that means? When marketing decided to use BASE-10 the size of drives were minimal and the differences were also minimal. What needs to be done is for marketing to use BASE-2 across the board if stating "1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes" is not clear enough to prevent a lawsuit.

[JeffDM]

I always figured that the people pushing the "i" notation are not the people that you want to humor. I know what it means, I know "better", but there are better or more interesting things to worry about. It's certainly a lot more nerdy than I care to get, kind of like the Kirk vs. Pickard arguments. Multiply that message by an order of magnitude or two for those suing based on ignorance of what the box says.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by Thomaspin

Apple Insider (and its fellow influential Apple blogs) would do a great service for all satisfied Apple users and stockholders were it to publish the names, addresses and emails of these petty tort abusers and their counsel. This would permit users to inundate these ethically challened people with suitably worded emails. It might not fix the problem but it would feel really, really good.

That would most likely constitute harassment and there could be some serious penalties for that.

[Quine]

Well it's a good thing Apple is being taken to task for this! I'm outraged that my 16gb iPod only has 14.8 gb usable space when my brand new $200 Zune has 30.0 gb of space as advertised! What a great deal for a great player! And my new Western Digital 250gb external hard drive has 250.0 GB of space too. But my Apple hard drive in my iMac only has 232.76 GB of space because it's made by Apple. Why is apple ripping us all off? I don't understand!!!





(Note: The statements above do not actually reflect any of what I believe, nor to they reflect reality)

[kresh]

Every week now, it's been happening so long I've forgotten when it started, there has been a new lawsuit against Apple.

I am wondering if there is not an ulterior motive somewhere. Is this a "death by 1000 cuts" campaign being waged against Apple?

Just for the sake of argument, I'm not saying this is true, but I hope that Microsoft is not out recruiting potential lawsuits and subsidizing them. Kinda like the paid blogging campaign.

If not Microsoft, then maybe Universal. They are definitely slimy enough, and they are really peeved at Apple's digital download dominance.

Just my conspiracy theory for the day. It's probably just a sign of the times of this entitlement generation.

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by kresh

I am wondering if there is not an ulterior motive somewhere. Is this a "death by 1000 cuts" campaign being waged against Apple?

Hmmmmm..... interesting.....

[Wiggin]

Originally Posted by KennyWRX

I just can't believe people can be stupid enough to sue for that.

HDs, RAM, Flash are all measured the same way. They all use a binary representation (1 or 0). The discrepancy lies in using scientific prefixes such as Giga (10^9) vs a the binary counterpart gibi (2^30).

2^30 / 10^9 = 1.0737...

8GB * (1Gi / 1.0737G) = 7.45GiB (...and thats what the computer should report)

While we are in agreement with the definitions of giga vs. gibi, I will point out that HDs and RAM are not measured the same way. Hard drives (and floppy drives) are not and never have been measured using the binary notation. It's not a marketing gimmick. Yes, they were storing kilobytes (as in 1024 bytes) because that's how the computer's memory was measured, but when they told you how many kilobytes they were storing it's always been straight-up decimal math. Basically, how many of the little buggers can I squeeze on the platter.

WARNING: History lesson ahead...

That 3.5 inch double-density floppy you used to have? 800 kB (720 if you were a DOS user ) ...nothing binary about that number. And if you really want to get technical, that 720 kB disk stored the information in sectors. Each sector held 1 unit (1 kB). There were 80 tracks on the disk and each track had 9 sectors mapped (80x9=720 sectors). 80 and 9...a few more non-binary numbers. And I'm sure if they could have squeezed 10 sectors per track, they would have. Oh wait, Apple did...thus the 800 kB floppy. And when they figured out a way to get 18 sectors/track, you got the 1.44 MB HD (that's high density for you young folks out there who don't remember floppies, not high definition) floppy. Yes, folks, 1440 sectors, 1440 kB. It was NOT a 1.40 MB floppy that you'd get if you used binary math!

So the real problem is that RAM manufacturers incorrectly used the metric prefixes. The fact that my 1 GB of RAM in my Mac is really 1,073,741,824 bytes is misleading and false advertising. I tried filing a class action lawsuit against RAM manufactures and computer makers for giving me more RAM than they said, but I can't get anyone to take my case.

[amex]

If Congress would change the law and look how other countries handle it (law suits, that is), this would be a non issue.
Ever heard of one of those crazy law suits taking place in Europe? I haven't. Wonder why?
If I am not mistaken that kind of law suit in Germany would be handled as follows:
You sue somebody for 1 million Euros. The court determines that you are right and will reward you with 250.000 Euro. That means you LOST the case by 75%. That means out of your 250.000 Euros you will pay 75% of the legal fees of the opposing party and 75% of the court fees.
Makes a lot of sense to me.

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple sued over iPod storage capacity claims

Meanwhile, Montreal law student David Bitton is peeved at Apple for what he claims is misleading marketing. When he found that his new iPod nano came out-of-the-box with only 7.45 GB of available capacity rather than the 8 GB advertised, he sued.

And this is coming from a professions that is one of the least trusted. http://www.lexisone.com/balancing/articles/090006i.html

And the same holds true in Canada. http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=3333 where politicians are regarded just above car sales persons.

Lest we forget, the most highly respected American Presidents were those who never stepped to the bar. The majority of the rest were lawyers.