Why are the displayed capacities different in Windows and Mac applications?

bretzelburg

From the sdcard.org website:

Windows uses a base-1024 to calculate capacities while Mac uses a base-1000, e.g. in Windows, 1MB = 1,024K kB = 1,048,576 bytes, while in Mac, 1MB = 1,000K kB = 1,000,000 bytes.

What is this good for? That's pure misinformation on Apple's side, not?

spheric

Hard drive manufacturers have been using the base-10 values to denote capacity for decades.

For many years, customers felt duped by Apple
and other manufacturers because actual formatted capacity appeared lower than what they’d paid for. It amounted to accusations of fraud, if not for the footnote on every single piece of sales literature and sticker on the box. 

Sometime in the last decade (was it Lion?), Apple took the initiative and switched OS X’s and iOS’ internal display methods from binary to base-10. 

I thought Windows had followed suit in Win8, though I may be wrong. Of course, the various applications didn’t automatically change their calculation method. 

edited May 2018

spheric

Informative rant:

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/base-ten-for-almost-everything/