On 12/27/11 2:38 PM, Robert Monaghan wrote: > Hi All, > > I was aware of the inflated numbers for marketing hard drives. But I > wasn't aware that Apple jumped on the marketing bandwagon. (Apple > adopt marketing terms? Never..)
While *we* understand the distinction between base-2 and base-10, the overwhelming majority of users don't know, don't care, and *shouldn't* have to care. Using base-10 isn't going to cause any problems (other than for software developers who, let's face it, make a career out of handling problems), so in this case it gives a better user experience to just use base-10. (And, as has been pointed out, the SI prefixes are reserved for base-10 anyway, so this isn't really even consistency at the sake of accuracy.) I would actually take this a step further: for most (but perhaps not an "overwhelming majority") users and situations, displaying file size at all degrades user experience. Rarely do I want to know "how large is a file?" More often I want to know something like: * Will a file fit on a storage medium? * How long will it take a file to download? * What percentage of a file do I already have? * (Implicitly) can I manipulate the contents of the file without slowing my computer down? Even on this mailing list I suspect that there are a number of people who couldn't say - without checking - how much free disk space they have or what their network throughput to some arbitrary remote host is. Without knowing these other data then file size is basically useless. So: in most cases, I would argue it is better to display the pertinent information, not the file size. (I needn't get into the conversation about whether we (read: users) should even be still thinking in terms of a 1980s office metaphor with files, folders, and desktops.) -- Conrad Shultz Synthetiq Solutions www.synthetiqsolutions.com _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
