
Marco Arment: "Everyone should play by the same rules.
A proposal: storage capacities referenced or implied in the names or advertisements for personal computers, tablets, and smartphones should not exceed the amount of space available for end-user installation of third-party applications and data, after enough software has been installed to enable all commonly advertised functionality. With today's OSes, iPads could advertise capacities no larger than 12, 28, 60, and 124 GB and the Surface Pros could be named 23 and 83 GB." Wholly agreed. When I buy a box of 100 staples, I expect it to contain ~100 staples - not 50 because the other 50 are holding the box together.
Member since:
2011-05-12
So you buy an 28 GB iPhone, 28 GB free, 4 for iOS and default apps.
iOS 7 arrived, taking up 5 GB. Now you have a 28 GB iPhone that can hold 27 GB.
Same for hard/ss disks. They may hold the OS when bought, but you can take them out and format them as data disk.
A new OS or updated one will also mess up this proposed system.
We all know now you have less free space than the advertised full capacity. Why confuse things?