My 8 GB phone had 7 gigs. Personally I expect this, and know the OS takes up a huge portion. But from an advertising perspective, I think it's dangerous. Surprised there haven't been any stupid class-action suits. - Stephen Mack

It's got a 32gig chip inside of it. you *do* have to share that chip with the OS and other stuff though... - Kevin Fox

You know that. I know that. Joe Blow on the street might sue over not knowing that... - Stephen Mack

If someone can't figure out that the phone needs software to run, they don't deserve this phone. There needs to be a penalty for lawyers who take these kinds of cases. - Cristo

And you're always going to lose something to formatting. - Andy Bold

Not to mention that you lose gigs because of the way that hardware manufacturers count bytes (1 kbyte=1000 bytes) and how software developers count bytes (1 kbyte=1024 bytes). - Alex Scoble

I'm guessing that chunk is occupied by the OS and native applications. And the way bytes are counted by manufacturers vs. retailers. - Brett Kelly

These are all excellent explanations as to why it is how it is. I personally have no objection and it's what I expected. But think about all those lawsuits about monitor sizes and hard disk capacity. We live in an overly-litigious society. There's no disclaimer text when Apple advertises the capacity. I'm just surprised they get away with it. - Stephen Mack

Alex, I know that applies to hard drives, but I don't think it does to RAM chips. RAM is pretty solidly built to 2^n bits. - Kevin Fox

It's not RAM, Kevin, it's still storage. Just because it's solid state storage doesn't mean that they changed the rules. :) You'll have the same issue when you buy a 32GB SDHC card and format it in Windows. - Alex Scoble

Here's an example lawsuit from 1997: http://news.cnet.com/2100-10... -- there it's because the manufacturer "rounded up" their monitor size to 14" when it was closer to 13" -- class action city. - Stephen Mack

Alex, what throws me is the "correct" (at least SI defined) way of referring to those units. One is kilobyte KB and the other is a kibibibyte KiB (kilo-binary-byte).... who the heck is going to say kibibibyte, makes you sound stupid, or at a minimum like you have a speech impediment. :) - mikepk

2.6 GB us a really big difference. I've often wondered how they get away with it - Alistair (alpinefolk)

If they sued me over this, I ask for the device, and wipe the flash clean, and send it back to them with its pristine 32gb. :) - Cristo

Stephen, it's as Alex said, HW vendors tend to quote capacity in 1000's of bytes and software generally uses in powers of 2 (1024). At GB size, it means the discrepancy between the units is quite significant. - mikepk

The wikipedia entry on the kibibyte (KiB) explains a majority of this discrepancy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - mikepk

When they sell a hard drive they cal it a 500 gig drive if the media can store 500,000,000,000 bytes prior to things like partition maps and other formatting overhead. My point is that a device with a 32 gig storage chip in it has a chip that holds 3.2x10^10 bytes, not 32,000,000,000 bytes (29.8 gb). Both devices have formatting overhead and system software allowances, but the primary fudging of binary GB vs decimal GB doesn't apply with chips iin the way that it does with hard drives. - Kevin Fox

Chris, when formatted 32GB (32,000,000,000bytes divided by 1,000,000,000) of data only registers as 29.8 GB (32,000,000,000/1,073,741,824) by the OS. - Alex Scoble

Question is, who do you sue? Who's making the false claim here? - Alex Scoble

I don't think anyone's making a false claim here. The dialog in the screenshot would be better written as 'Available Capacity' rather than 'Capacity' but this situation is not the same as hard drive capacity fudging. It's just not. - Kevin Fox

although it is a good point that it's a solid state storage... so in theory it should be powers of 2 byte capacity. I'll see if I can dig up a data sheet (been a while since I HW noodled :) ). - mikepk

Apple's footnote on the iPhone page: "1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." - Glen Campbell

It is exactly the same, Kevin, for the exact same reason. If the iPhone had a 32GB hard drive in it instead of a 32GB solid state storage unit in it, you would have the EXACT same capacity. - Alex Scoble

Actually, to be correct. 32 billion bytes equals 29.80GB. You've been ripped mate! Apple has only put in a 31.49GB hard drive! - Giraffes Up In The AIr

I think the lost space is due to the OS and apps, Mr. Smelly. - Alex Scoble

No. A hard drive advertised as '32GB' would have an unformatted capacity of 32,000,000,000 bytes. An iPhone with an advertised capacity of '32GB' has an unformatted capacity of 34,359,738,368 bytes. Formatting and other overhead is sucking the capacity down lower, but the two numbers abofe are not equal, so the situation is not the same. - Kevin Fox

Not true, Kevin. Storage is storage. The bits are equal. A 32GB SDHC (which is functionally what the iPhone has) card has the same storage as a 32GB hard drive. They are exact. Because storage is storage. - Alex Scoble

++Alex on this one. - G. Sigh

Hardware manufacturers always use the measurement that makes the drive seem bigger, no matter what type of drive it is - Arthur Guy

Alex, pardon my french, but Jesus Christ. The iPhone has a 32gig NAND chip manufactured by Toshiba. If you go to the spec sheet for that chip (here: http://www.toshiba.com/taec... ) it clearly states "When used herein in relation to memory density, gigabyte and/or GB means 1,024x1,024x1,024 = 1,073,741,824 bytes." If, on the other hand, you go to Seagate and download a spec sheet for one of their hard drives ( http://www.seagate.com/docs... ) it says "When referring to hard drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes". Can you appreciate this difference? - Kevin Fox

Wow, this discussion has gone pretty far afield from my original question. Glen Campbell pointed out the disclaimer text I previously missed. In small print on the back of my box, they do have this text: "1 GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." That's how Apple gets away with it! That's what prevents them from being sued. I am enjoying watching Kevin and Alex go back and forth though. - Stephen Mack

Kevin, that was what I was about to write. Chips are organized around powers of 2 because of the way they're designed. Hard drives don't have the same structural limitation, so that's why they can get away with decimal bytes. So with Apple's disclaimer, makes me wonder if flash technology has moved to the point where they're not constrained by traditional memory cell design, or if it's in some kind of odd configuration. I used to design computers and embedded systems, but it's been a looong time so my skillz are rusty. I'll poke at the data sheet. - mikepk

As evidenced by this thread, space truly is the final frontier. - Micah Wittman

To settle it, we'd need to know if the total capacity available to the OS is 34,359,738,368 bytes or 32,000,000,000 bytes. Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't report capacity in a granular enough fashion. So I don't know. To any developer, engineer or computer person, a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes. But to any marketing person, a gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. And when it comes to advertising, the marketing team always wins. - Stephen Mack

LOL, Kevin, amazing how Toshiba's website is completely WRONG! http://www.sandisk.com/Assets... The Toshiba memory unit is an SD/MMC format card. Memory sizes for those cards are given based on 1MB=1,000,000 bytes as seen on the Sandisk site for a card of the SAME size. - Alex Scoble

mikepk: I'd bet the disclaimer on the box is either just a holdover from legal who habitually slaps this copy on all boxes, or they put it in to forestall people being pissed off in Stephen's situation, even though it's technically not true. - Kevin Fox

No, the disclaimer is on the box because storage is measured by the marketing guys using 1KB=1000bytes and the OS measures 1KB=1024bytes. Storage is storage. Period. - Alex Scoble

Stephen, there are arguments either way. To be a true metric unit would require it to be powers of 1000. There is actually a *separate* SI unit for binary data measurements (the wikipedia link I posted above). They were trying to help avoid the confusion of 1,024 vs 1,000 meaning 'kilobyte'. No one uses the binary SI unit though, I think mainly cause they're awkward sounding. - mikepk

mikepk, yup, I have never heard anyone ever use that terminology! - Stephen Mack

Alex got it right. Doesn't matter what storage it is. It's storage, whether it's a hard disk, a CF card, a SD card or - wait for it - the iPhone... :) - Holger Eilhard

Exactly. - Alex Scoble

Alex: 'storage is storage, period' makes no sense. Bits are bits. Facts are facts. Tautologies are tautological. RAM chips are constructed in 2^N capacities. Hard drives are not. Traditional NAND chips are, and SD/MMC ships sometimes are and sometimes are not. Please provide documentation backing up your twin premises that the Toshiba NAND chips are based on Sandisk's SD/MMC ships, and that the SD/MMC chips they use are 1000x1000x1000. Saying the official spec sheets are wrong and you're right because 'storage is storage' is no way to construct an argument outside the confines of Fox News. - Kevin Fox

Kevin, the numbers speak for themselves. I have nothing further to add. - Alex Scoble

I'm on Candid Camera right now, right? No matter. I'm done with you Alex. Again. - Kevin Fox

"Screw you, Alex Scoble!" :-) - Holger Eilhard

If you had been properly using me in the first place you wouldn't have needlessly entered in to an argument with me. You can't be done with that which you haven't even tried. - Alex Scoble

Kevin's point is actually valid. You may measure storage in decimal, but memory chips (and by extension solid state memory chips) are organized on principles of power of 2. There's a structural issue there (why your computer RAM always has memory in powers of 2 512MB not just 500MB, but hard drives can be any arbitrary capacity). Now maybe some flash chips are *not* organized on powers of 2 (which seems weird but I admit it could be possible, I've been out of the HW game for a long time), or there's some other effect going on here. I'm wondering if there's some way flash manufacturers increase yield by sacrificing capacity (marking off parts of the die as bad but maintaining x1000 storage). - mikepk

Setting aside that portion of the debate for a second, I think Apple may want to rethink their approach and outdo all the other hardware manufacturers. Instead of advertising 32 gigs and having the user be shown a screen that shows 29.33 gigs, why not advertise the usable capacity? (TiVo ended up doing that for the last few years -- we advertise a unit with x hours of capacity at basic quality, but actually provide MORE hours than that at basic quality in SysInfo. We learned the hard way that it's better to exceed customer's expectations.) - Stephen Mack

Stephen, with the caveat that over time your usable storage degrades, from system updates among other things. - Cristo

Cristo, that's a good point. But out-of-box is where you want to make sure you're winning (or retaining) loyalty and reassuring customers they made the right choice. - Stephen Mack

Mark, Apple still does and so does pretty much everyone else. - Alex Scoble

HDD's raw data capacity is still in N^2 format, it's just us humans that like to keep things to a rounded number. Why do you think people refer to 2048MB of RAM as "2gig"? The "real" space on a HDD won't ever equal the advertised capacity, but it is still presented to your computer as N^2 regardless of what we bags of meat call them. - alphaxion

Actually, alphaxion, because the medium allows arbitrary memory density, there's actually no power of two limit on HDD storage. That's why you can get hard drives in all sorts of weird (from a binary standpoint) capacities. 160GB, 500GB, etc... Yes the data is still binary, but there's no structural limit that it has to be 'binned' in binary containers on magnetic media. - mikepk

The decimal value we refer to exists only in our minds. That storage is still being used as binary. This is where the problem really is. Because that 160GB HDD isn't really 160GB to the computer and never will be. Lexigraphical laziness on the human part ;) That, and always wanting more for our money! - alphaxion

A point I had forgotten.. magnetic HDD's are based on multiples of 512 bytes (a sector) for their storage capacity. - alphaxion

why not make 34.67 GB then we will have the 32 GB to store stuff on. How simple is that - mark roberts