An interesting point. At the dawn of computers, I think one had to install the OS oneself and, later on, there were choices of OS you could load. So describing the hardware did not involve outlining the potential space lost when an OS was installed. Even today, with a Mac, the ordinary user can run MacOS, or Linux, or even Windows. However, on an iPhone, I don't believe the ordinary user can run anything other than iOS. In effect, the OS storage overhead should be part of the description of the hardware. Today's telephones are a different product being marketed, so the standards used at the "dawn of computers" really shouldn't apply. Even fifteen years ago, cell phones of the day would tell you upfront at purchase that you could store only 20 txt messages and 100 contacts in the directory (for example). It was precious space, and if the advertised numbers were wrong, I think it would have been misleading. Somehow modern smartphone makers like Samsung now think it's legitimate to sell their phones based upon a capacity figure that is incorrect by a large margin, since onboard systems must use much of it. I recall that a year or two ago we here on AI were making light of Samsung for using over half the advertised storage for the OS and preloaded software on their phones. I believed then that a lawsuit was in order. I still believe it. Alas, Apple is the one making the most money, and since they are similarly guilty, though by much less of a margin, I can see why the lawyers are suing them instead of Samsung. FWIW, many other brands of smartphone do allow add-on memory cards. Apple should have seen this coming. Lawyers always sue the deepest pockets.
And it was the success of the iPhone and iPad than caused Apple Inc. to drop "Computer" from its name. Yes, and iPhone is a computer, but that's not how it's advertised. And although you can easily find that Mac OS X will take 8 GB of available storage (http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/), I can't find a similar statement about iOS on the iPhone or iOS product pages (http://www.apple.com/ios/what-is/). Apple wants you/us to think about the iPhone and iOS devices differently from Macs, in the way you describe.
How about the trunk lid hinges, which is hardware specific to the function of the trunk lid? On a lot of cars (not all) the hinges for the trunk lid encroach on the storage space; not when open but when closing or closed.
Ha! those hinges don't occupy much space... but that crunching sound when you close the hatch? That's the protruding hinges poking two big holes thru the 48" LED TV you just bought at W*M and were so confident would fit in that capacious trunk of yours... LOL! I don't think your lawsuit against Ford will get anywhere though.
Before you jump in with "Apple makes it very clear that some of the 16GB is used for the OS on their Web site" you might want to check the site. I assumed I would be able to find some clear language that would cover Apple, but the closest thing I could find was this:
"1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." on the Technical Specs page.
Or
"How much storage is right for you?
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus come in three storage sizes: 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB. The term
"GB" stands for gigabytes. The more gigabytes you have, the more content you can store on your iPhone, such as apps, games, photos, HD videos, music, and movies. For example, if you have a large music or photo library or lots of apps, it%u2019s a good idea to consider an iPhone with a larger storage capacity. If you rarely download apps or you don%u2019t take many photos or videos, an iPhone with a smaller capacity may be better for you. When deciding which size to choose, be sure to consider how your storage needs may change over time."
And, as you can see, they make no mention of the fact that a few GB of storage is used up regardless of what size you get.
It looks like Apple dropped the ball on this one, and it may end of costing them.
What utter horseshit! Every single person, unless your a complete moron, in which case you shouldn't own a "smart" phone, knows that the OS and preinstalled apps take up part of the advertised storage. We should find Paul and Christopher, along with their lawyers, tar and feather them, and ship them to a remote island to fulfill their miserable lives.
Ok, so your complaint is with my "assertion" that the "OS and other stuff" take up 3GB instead of 3GiB or whatever?
Here's where I (and the complainants) are coming from: "You said 16GB, but in fact we have maybe 12-13GB to play with." I personally don't care what proportion of that missing 3-4GB is from formatting the drive, the OS, the virtual memory swap space, the apps I can't delete, etc., etc. I think it would be better if Apple addressed this more explicitly. Would you have jumped all over me if I had said that Apple should say something like "On a 16GB device less than 12GB will be available for your apps and stuff" rather than "we're using 3 GB for the OS and stuff"?
And if they included the 12GB limit and some user loaded enough Apple apps to put it under the 12GB, another stupid Class Action lawyers would be asking for more money because there was not enough room to take that priceless picture of a puppy.
I bought the 16GB 6 Plus and filled in up with a few apps and about 600 songs. That was the first day I owned it and it gave low or no space warnings. I did own an iPhone before so I had no idea the 16'ers filled up that quickly. I tried to originally upgrade in by 14 day period, but there were no phones in Plus size. I have to live without many songs loaded on it basically. But it did irk me a few times that I couldn't take a photo or video. I'm in on the suit, if it flies.
You had a choice "but there were no phones in the Plus size", but you decided to hold on to the 16GB rather than wait months for a replacement. Sucks to be you, but I'm not seeing Apple as being part of this problem.
2) I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments had clearly isolated the fact that Apple uses decimal notation to advertise capacity and the binary notation to advertise capacity in the OS. I would not have "jumped all over" your comments noted that this was an industry issue, not an issue isolated to Apple or iOS. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have converted between decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have noted that the lawsuit doesn't convert from decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your argument was clearly framed as a desire for Apple to show that user-accessible storage area for post default installation to be noted on their Tech Specs page as either GB or GiB.
So how would you state it?
I don't believe the GB versus GiB issue is at all relevant to this discussion. Apple advertises a 16 GB device but only 12-13 GB is available for end-user storage. That's the complaint.
The specs don't say, or claim to say, how much space you have to play with - they simply describe the flash storage capacity of the device. Where does Apple (or any other manufacturer for that matter) ever claim that you will have 16 GB (for example) of space for personal files?
I think it's a valid desire that the free user space for a new device for a given OS from a given manufacturer be listed for clarity. As noted by the Surface Pro, the larger the OS and the larger the drive this issue will continue to be more problematic as these things increase.
If this can't be done for transparency by companies on their own (or by law), then I really wish someone would start a Consumer Reports-like service for CE that not only had all this info in GB and GiB, but also included info about pre-installed apps over a default OS build, start times, comparisons +/-% from the previous one (e.g: iOS 8.2.0 is -03% over iOS 8.1.2, Samung Galaxy S6 [North America] Lollipop is +38% over Android Lollipop), and a security check to have a basic idea of which manufacturers are installing rootkits, backdoors, spyware, etc. I'd think that's a service that would be helpful to the typical PC buyers and may help keep vendors on the up and up.
2) I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments had clearly isolated the fact that Apple uses decimal notation to advertise capacity and the binary notation to advertise capacity in the OS. I would not have "jumped all over" your comments noted that this was an industry issue, not an issue isolated to Apple or iOS. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have converted between decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have noted that the lawsuit doesn't convert from decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your argument was clearly framed as a desire for Apple to show that user-accessible storage area for post default installation to be noted on their Tech Specs page as either GB or GiB.
So how would you state it?
I don't believe the GB versus GiB issue is relevant to this discussion. The complaint is that Apple advertises a 16GB device but only 12-13GB is available for end-user content and apps. As someone else pointed out here, Apple could (in theory) include the OS on a separate drive making a full 16GB available for storage. It's not entirely unreasonable that a typical consumer could assume that they have 16GB to play with (as they do when they buy a camera with a 16GB memory card, for example).
Where are they getting their figures from? Why would iOS take up more space on an iPod than an iPhone? And are these people going to sue every other manufacturer since they're even worse than Apple in this regard?
Assuming that chart is accurate and I have no reason to doubt it, you hit the nail on the head. The law suit is going after the wrong company even assuming it made sense which it doesn't.
That said, IMHO no iPhone should be made with less than 32 GIGs these days witness the update mess iOS 8 caused for many with over the air failures, which is so un Apple. Storage costs at those low levels must surely be way down now. Heck, all my Camera flash cards are 32 and 64 GIGs these days. SSD seems to be holding high prices for far too long (don't even mention my nMac Pro and SSD costs .... aaaggghhh) but Flash is cheap now.
It is the lawyers who go fishing for morons as clients, not clonus ers who go looking for a lawyer.
I suspect you are right there ... I think I translated the lysdexia correctly . There is something intrinsically wrong about 'working' the law that way around, it seems ass backwards to me.
According to all your earlier posts on this thread; you mean "just for Apple".
I've never said that Apple should lose this lawsuit. I hope they don't. But if they do, it'll be because they didn't cover their asses sufficiently in their tech specs page.
This is an Apple forum, so I'm saying what I think Apple should do. I've never said that we need stronger "consumer protection" laws to force them to do so.
So no, I don't mean "just for Apple" (whatever that means), but I mean "just for companies that are interested in being honest and forthright and care about ethics."
It's an Apple forum, but it's not an "Apple Issue". You keep painting this as if it were.
It's like saying the posting of MPG on automobiles as mandated by NHTSA / EPA is a "Ford" issue.
And it was the success of the iPhone and iPad than caused Apple Inc. to drop "Computer" from its name. Yes, and iPhone is a computer, but that's not how it's advertised. And although you can easily find that Mac OS X will take 8 GB of available storage (http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/), I can't find a similar statement about iOS on the iPhone or iOS product pages (http://www.apple.com/ios/what-is/). Apple wants you/us to think about the iPhone and iOS devices differently from Macs, in the way you describe.
Well I think the strongest defense in this case may have to do with (1) as mentioned by @muppetry Apple does not suggest that you have all the advertised space at your disposal for storing things like apps and cat videos, and (2) the current industry standard for describing smartphones is a purely hardware description, that does not account for the software necessary to use the device, and (3) as sold, out of the box, the iPhone is fully capable of functional operation, and has adequate space available to download any app sold by the app store, or store a large number of photos, or a reasonable number of videos. If it were the case that the device didn't work as sold, or differed from current smartphone industry standards, or if Apple had said that all storage was available for personal storage, or if you couldn't use the included app to make a few minutes of video of granny's last wishes, then the case against Apple might be much stronger. As much as I would LIKE for the industry to disclose the amount of available storage when the device is sold, I don't think it merits a lawsuit. Yes, I'm waffling on my statement above that filling half the advertised space of a Samsung phone merited a lawsuit. Obviously I'm still thinking things through. (Thanks to all for the vigorous discussion!)
It is, because I've I've previously shown it alters the values stated in the lawsuit by a significant amount.
No.
No.
If you've provided an example of a sentence that Apple could include on their product page to make this clear, I've missed it. Care to share it again?
The complaint goes into quite a bit of details about the difference between GB and GiB and calls out Apple for showing GiB values labeled as GB on the phone itself.
Are you saying that they got their math wrong in the table in their complaint (and included multiple times in this thread) where they show that only 13GB is available?
Well I think the strongest defense in this case may have to do with (1) as mentioned by @muppetry Apple does not suggest that you have all the advertised space at your disposal for storing things like apps and cat videos, and (2) the current industry standard for describing smartphones is a purely hardware description, that does not account for the software necessary to use the device, and (3) as sold, out of the box, the iPhone is fully capable of functional operation, and has adequate space available to download any app sold by the app store, or store a large number of photos, or a reasonable number of videos. If it were the case that the device didn't work as sold, or differed from current smartphone industry standards, or if Apple had said that all storage was available for personal storage, or if you couldn't use the included app to make a few minutes of video of granny's last wishes, then the case against Apple might be much stronger. As much as I would LIKE for the industry to disclose the amount of available storage when the device is sold, I don't think it merits a lawsuit. Yes, I'm waffling on my statement above that filling half the advertised space of a Samsung phone merited a lawsuit. Obviously I'm still thinking things through.
I agree with you. As I've said before, I expect the Apple legal team is wishing right about now that they had some clearer language on their product page saying that the advertised capacity is not all available for user content due to the OS and other stuff. Lawyers like to have multiple defenses, and "look here where we specifically told you about this" is a good one to have. "Everyone else does it this way too" isn't quite as good.
The specs don't say, or claim to say, how much space you have to play with - they simply describe the flash storage capacity of the device. Where does Apple (or any other manufacturer for that matter) ever claim that you will have 16 GB (for example) of space for personal files?
I think it's a valid desire that the free user space for a new device for a given OS from a given manufacturer be listed for clarity. As noted by the Surface Pro, the larger the OS and the larger the drive this issue will continue to be more problematic as these things increase.
If this can't be done for transparency by companies on their own (or by law), then I really wish someone would start a Consumer Reports-like service for CE that not only had all this info in GB and GiB, but also included info about pre-installed apps over a default OS build, start times, comparisons +/-% from the previous one (e.g: iOS 8.2.0 is -03% over iOS 8.1.2, Samung Galaxy S6 [North America] Lollipop is +38% over Android Lollipop), and a security check to have a basic idea of which manufacturers are installing rootkits, backdoors, spyware, etc. I'd think that's a service that would be helpful to the typical PC buyers and may help keep vendors on the up and up.
I agree that it would be useful information (especially for other manufacturers' devices that hog a much higher fraction of the storage for their OS) - I'm simply arguing that since that has never been the industry standard description (which has historically been quite uniform) then there is no case to answer.
Comments
An interesting point. At the dawn of computers, I think one had to install the OS oneself and, later on, there were choices of OS you could load. So describing the hardware did not involve outlining the potential space lost when an OS was installed. Even today, with a Mac, the ordinary user can run MacOS, or Linux, or even Windows. However, on an iPhone, I don't believe the ordinary user can run anything other than iOS. In effect, the OS storage overhead should be part of the description of the hardware. Today's telephones are a different product being marketed, so the standards used at the "dawn of computers" really shouldn't apply. Even fifteen years ago, cell phones of the day would tell you upfront at purchase that you could store only 20 txt messages and 100 contacts in the directory (for example). It was precious space, and if the advertised numbers were wrong, I think it would have been misleading. Somehow modern smartphone makers like Samsung now think it's legitimate to sell their phones based upon a capacity figure that is incorrect by a large margin, since onboard systems must use much of it. I recall that a year or two ago we here on AI were making light of Samsung for using over half the advertised storage for the OS and preloaded software on their phones. I believed then that a lawsuit was in order. I still believe it. Alas, Apple is the one making the most money, and since they are similarly guilty, though by much less of a margin, I can see why the lawyers are suing them instead of Samsung. FWIW, many other brands of smartphone do allow add-on memory cards. Apple should have seen this coming. Lawyers always sue the deepest pockets.
And it was the success of the iPhone and iPad than caused Apple Inc. to drop "Computer" from its name. Yes, and iPhone is a computer, but that's not how it's advertised. And although you can easily find that Mac OS X will take 8 GB of available storage (http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/), I can't find a similar statement about iOS on the iPhone or iOS product pages (http://www.apple.com/ios/what-is/). Apple wants you/us to think about the iPhone and iOS devices differently from Macs, in the way you describe.
How about the trunk lid hinges, which is hardware specific to the function of the trunk lid? On a lot of cars (not all) the hinges for the trunk lid encroach on the storage space; not when open but when closing or closed.
Ha! those hinges don't occupy much space... but that crunching sound when you close the hatch? That's the protruding hinges poking two big holes thru the 48" LED TV you just bought at W*M and were so confident would fit in that capacious trunk of yours... LOL! I don't think your lawsuit against Ford will get anywhere though.
What utter horseshit! Every single person, unless your a complete moron, in which case you shouldn't own a "smart" phone, knows that the OS and preinstalled apps take up part of the advertised storage. We should find Paul and Christopher, along with their lawyers, tar and feather them, and ship them to a remote island to fulfill their miserable lives.
Ok, so your complaint is with my "assertion" that the "OS and other stuff" take up 3GB instead of 3GiB or whatever?
Here's where I (and the complainants) are coming from: "You said 16GB, but in fact we have maybe 12-13GB to play with." I personally don't care what proportion of that missing 3-4GB is from formatting the drive, the OS, the virtual memory swap space, the apps I can't delete, etc., etc. I think it would be better if Apple addressed this more explicitly. Would you have jumped all over me if I had said that Apple should say something like "On a 16GB device less than 12GB will be available for your apps and stuff" rather than "we're using 3 GB for the OS and stuff"?
And if they included the 12GB limit and some user loaded enough Apple apps to put it under the 12GB, another stupid Class Action lawyers would be asking for more money because there was not enough room to take that priceless picture of a puppy.
I bought the 16GB 6 Plus and filled in up with a few apps and about 600 songs. That was the first day I owned it and it gave low or no space warnings. I did own an iPhone before so I had no idea the 16'ers filled up that quickly. I tried to originally upgrade in by 14 day period, but there were no phones in Plus size. I have to live without many songs loaded on it basically. But it did irk me a few times that I couldn't take a photo or video. I'm in on the suit, if it flies.
You had a choice "but there were no phones in the Plus size", but you decided to hold on to the 16GB rather than wait months for a replacement. Sucks to be you, but I'm not seeing Apple as being part of this problem.
Judge: F**K this BS! Case closed. Next ...??
Yes.
1) That's still not accurately stated.
2) I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments had clearly isolated the fact that Apple uses decimal notation to advertise capacity and the binary notation to advertise capacity in the OS. I would not have "jumped all over" your comments noted that this was an industry issue, not an issue isolated to Apple or iOS. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have converted between decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have noted that the lawsuit doesn't convert from decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your argument was clearly framed as a desire for Apple to show that user-accessible storage area for post default installation to be noted on their Tech Specs page as either GB or GiB.
So how would you state it?
I don't believe the GB versus GiB issue is at all relevant to this discussion. Apple advertises a 16 GB device but only 12-13 GB is available for end-user storage. That's the complaint.
I think it's a valid desire that the free user space for a new device for a given OS from a given manufacturer be listed for clarity. As noted by the Surface Pro, the larger the OS and the larger the drive this issue will continue to be more problematic as these things increase.
If this can't be done for transparency by companies on their own (or by law), then I really wish someone would start a Consumer Reports-like service for CE that not only had all this info in GB and GiB, but also included info about pre-installed apps over a default OS build, start times, comparisons +/-% from the previous one (e.g: iOS 8.2.0 is -03% over iOS 8.1.2, Samung Galaxy S6 [North America] Lollipop is +38% over Android Lollipop), and a security check to have a basic idea of which manufacturers are installing rootkits, backdoors, spyware, etc. I'd think that's a service that would be helpful to the typical PC buyers and may help keep vendors on the up and up.
Yes.
1) That's still not accurately stated.
2) I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments had clearly isolated the fact that Apple uses decimal notation to advertise capacity and the binary notation to advertise capacity in the OS. I would not have "jumped all over" your comments noted that this was an industry issue, not an issue isolated to Apple or iOS. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have converted between decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your comments would have noted that the lawsuit doesn't convert from decimal and binary. I would not have "jumped all over" you if your argument was clearly framed as a desire for Apple to show that user-accessible storage area for post default installation to be noted on their Tech Specs page as either GB or GiB.
So how would you state it?
I don't believe the GB versus GiB issue is relevant to this discussion. The complaint is that Apple advertises a 16GB device but only 12-13GB is available for end-user content and apps. As someone else pointed out here, Apple could (in theory) include the OS on a separate drive making a full 16GB available for storage. It's not entirely unreasonable that a typical consumer could assume that they have 16GB to play with (as they do when they buy a camera with a 16GB memory card, for example).
Accurately, like I've been doing.
It is, because I've I've previously shown it alters the values stated in the lawsuit by a significant amount.
No.
No.
Assuming that chart is accurate and I have no reason to doubt it, you hit the nail on the head. The law suit is going after the wrong company even assuming it made sense which it doesn't.
That said, IMHO no iPhone should be made with less than 32 GIGs these days witness the update mess iOS 8 caused for many with over the air failures, which is so un Apple. Storage costs at those low levels must surely be way down now. Heck, all my Camera flash cards are 32 and 64 GIGs these days. SSD seems to be holding high prices for far too long (don't even mention my nMac Pro and SSD costs .... aaaggghhh) but Flash is cheap now.
I'm pretty sure he doesn't want them anymore.
I suspect you are right there ... I think I translated the lysdexia correctly . There is something intrinsically wrong about 'working' the law that way around, it seems ass backwards to me.
According to all your earlier posts on this thread; you mean "just for Apple".
I've never said that Apple should lose this lawsuit. I hope they don't. But if they do, it'll be because they didn't cover their asses sufficiently in their tech specs page.
This is an Apple forum, so I'm saying what I think Apple should do. I've never said that we need stronger "consumer protection" laws to force them to do so.
So no, I don't mean "just for Apple" (whatever that means), but I mean "just for companies that are interested in being honest and forthright and care about ethics."
It's an Apple forum, but it's not an "Apple Issue". You keep painting this as if it were.
It's like saying the posting of MPG on automobiles as mandated by NHTSA / EPA is a "Ford" issue.
And it was the success of the iPhone and iPad than caused Apple Inc. to drop "Computer" from its name. Yes, and iPhone is a computer, but that's not how it's advertised. And although you can easily find that Mac OS X will take 8 GB of available storage (http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/), I can't find a similar statement about iOS on the iPhone or iOS product pages (http://www.apple.com/ios/what-is/). Apple wants you/us to think about the iPhone and iOS devices differently from Macs, in the way you describe.
Well I think the strongest defense in this case may have to do with (1) as mentioned by @muppetry Apple does not suggest that you have all the advertised space at your disposal for storing things like apps and cat videos, and (2) the current industry standard for describing smartphones is a purely hardware description, that does not account for the software necessary to use the device, and (3) as sold, out of the box, the iPhone is fully capable of functional operation, and has adequate space available to download any app sold by the app store, or store a large number of photos, or a reasonable number of videos. If it were the case that the device didn't work as sold, or differed from current smartphone industry standards, or if Apple had said that all storage was available for personal storage, or if you couldn't use the included app to make a few minutes of video of granny's last wishes, then the case against Apple might be much stronger. As much as I would LIKE for the industry to disclose the amount of available storage when the device is sold, I don't think it merits a lawsuit. Yes, I'm waffling on my statement above that filling half the advertised space of a Samsung phone merited a lawsuit. Obviously I'm still thinking things through. (Thanks to all for the vigorous discussion!)
Accurately, like I've been doing.
It is, because I've I've previously shown it alters the values stated in the lawsuit by a significant amount.
No.
No.
If you've provided an example of a sentence that Apple could include on their product page to make this clear, I've missed it. Care to share it again?
The complaint goes into quite a bit of details about the difference between GB and GiB and calls out Apple for showing GiB values labeled as GB on the phone itself.
Are you saying that they got their math wrong in the table in their complaint (and included multiple times in this thread) where they show that only 13GB is available?
Well I think the strongest defense in this case may have to do with (1) as mentioned by @muppetry Apple does not suggest that you have all the advertised space at your disposal for storing things like apps and cat videos, and (2) the current industry standard for describing smartphones is a purely hardware description, that does not account for the software necessary to use the device, and (3) as sold, out of the box, the iPhone is fully capable of functional operation, and has adequate space available to download any app sold by the app store, or store a large number of photos, or a reasonable number of videos. If it were the case that the device didn't work as sold, or differed from current smartphone industry standards, or if Apple had said that all storage was available for personal storage, or if you couldn't use the included app to make a few minutes of video of granny's last wishes, then the case against Apple might be much stronger. As much as I would LIKE for the industry to disclose the amount of available storage when the device is sold, I don't think it merits a lawsuit. Yes, I'm waffling on my statement above that filling half the advertised space of a Samsung phone merited a lawsuit. Obviously I'm still thinking things through.
I agree with you. As I've said before, I expect the Apple legal team is wishing right about now that they had some clearer language on their product page saying that the advertised capacity is not all available for user content due to the OS and other stuff. Lawyers like to have multiple defenses, and "look here where we specifically told you about this" is a good one to have. "Everyone else does it this way too" isn't quite as good.
The specs don't say, or claim to say, how much space you have to play with - they simply describe the flash storage capacity of the device. Where does Apple (or any other manufacturer for that matter) ever claim that you will have 16 GB (for example) of space for personal files?
I think it's a valid desire that the free user space for a new device for a given OS from a given manufacturer be listed for clarity. As noted by the Surface Pro, the larger the OS and the larger the drive this issue will continue to be more problematic as these things increase.
If this can't be done for transparency by companies on their own (or by law), then I really wish someone would start a Consumer Reports-like service for CE that not only had all this info in GB and GiB, but also included info about pre-installed apps over a default OS build, start times, comparisons +/-% from the previous one (e.g: iOS 8.2.0 is -03% over iOS 8.1.2, Samung Galaxy S6 [North America] Lollipop is +38% over Android Lollipop), and a security check to have a basic idea of which manufacturers are installing rootkits, backdoors, spyware, etc. I'd think that's a service that would be helpful to the typical PC buyers and may help keep vendors on the up and up.
I agree that it would be useful information (especially for other manufacturers' devices that hog a much higher fraction of the storage for their OS) - I'm simply arguing that since that has never been the industry standard description (which has historically been quite uniform) then there is no case to answer.