Snow Leopard calculating drive capacity in base 10

[djackmac]

Something I've noticed lately with Snow Leopard which I had not heard anything about but have been noticing with installing Snow Leopard or using disk utility with Snow Leopard systems. Just a nice little bonus I wasn't originally aware of that 10.6 is seeing drive capacities in decimal now to match the drive manufacturers specs as opposed to calculating in binary like they and Windows had been forever. Did a little digging and found a knowledge base article in regards to the change.

 

[Giaguara]

Hadn't noticed that yet but neat so now e.g. a 200 GB hard drive has 200 GB and not less

 

[djackmac]

Hadn't noticed that yet but neat so now e.g. a 200 GB hard drive has 200 GB and not less

Exactly. Added bonus me thinks.

 

[fryke]

You're kidding, hopefully. There ain't "more space" on the drive now, it's just calculated and shown differently.

 

[macbri]

Imagine if this was how Apple "recovered" the approx 7GB disk space between 10.5 and 10.6

 

[fryke]

It's not, thankfully.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

There are reports that you can force Snow Leopard back into base-2 (at least for the Finder):

http://sites.google.com/site/snowleopardbase2/

From that procedure, I think I'd rather stick with base-10 than go replacing binaries in my system.

 

[djackmac]

Imagine if this was how Apple "recovered" the approx 7GB disk space between 10.5 and 10.6

That was done mainly by eliminating the PPC code due to the fact 10.5 had to support Intel and PPC platforms.

 

[Giaguara]

PPC code removal didn't and wouldn't save 7 GB. Not when the whole OS would be in the category of ~ 10 GB or less (so nowhere as bloated as Windows 7 with its 40 GB ...).
7 GB simply as reporting it in 10-base, instead of 2.

But sure, PPC code removal and removing the useless languages doesn't hurt as usually there is more use for that disk space anyway.