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The newest OS X from Apple, Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 was just released and boasts some pretty nifty features.  One of the more interesting ones is that it claims to take up a lot less space than Leopard.  Upon installation, you can actually RECOVER up to 6 gigabytes of space.

However, it was also recently revealed that Snow Leopard reports free space differently than most other operating systems.  Instead of reporting a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, Snow Leopard reports a kilobyte as 1000 bytes.  Likewise for megabytes, gigabytes, and I would assume, terabyte.

As a result, that 8gb USB stick will actually be reported as 8gb as opposed to 7.4gb.  I would assume that this move is an attempt to alleviate consumer confusion about “missing space” though I can see it potentially increasing confusion instead!

So does Snow Leopard actually recover 6 gigabytes of space or is it just reported as such?  The truth is, it does recover close to 6gb of actual space in addition to any “gains” from the change of disk space calculation.

It should be noted that technically, both definitions are correct and are often used interchangably so Snow Leopard isn’t doing anything wrong.  Apple just isn’t following the convention that previous operating systems have always adhered to.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 8:14 am and is filed under Apple, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.