Why Are File Sizes Different On Macs Than Windows and Other Places?

[@serenadenphoto]

The international standard (IEC) have the units KiB, MiB, GiB etcetera, when you'r dealing with base 1024. Something for Google and Dropbox to learn.

[@FalconEagleEye7]

Love your Shows - Life long Mac user - Learn ALOT from YOU - Thanks .

[@ura9390]

thanks i just spent half an hr discussing this with DropBox as i thought i might have missing files and they clearly dont know this, were talking about my sync being wrong and other things that dont make sense!!

[@Sergesouszero]

Good teaching. Thanks Gary!

[@hanes2]

Oh yeah this oldie. They changed it in Snow Leopard partly due to representation of storage got out of hands in terms of what people was buying…. U bought 1TB but only got a 931GB because the hard drive makers counted as metric because it gained them in marketing

[@chocoloco9985]

Thank you for the free math lesson😅

[@radman8321]

Nobody uses Kibibytes etc. The 1024 figure is/was used wherever hardware is involved. Being based on the binary system the physical hardware has to be a multiple of 2. That's why RAM still uses the 1024 system. Hard drive manufacturers changed just to increase the size of the drives they were selling and Apple changed just because they like to be different. And if we are talking about correctness the marketing of 4K or 5K monitors follows rounding that is even further off than storage.

[@tunneloflight]

Actually - no! Apple is reporting the terms correctly. The other systems report the wrong units. The abbreviations should be kiB, MiB, GiB, or TiB. And not kB, MB, GB, or TiB. Note that the k is lowercase. Apple reports that incorrectly. Reporting it as upper case is common but wrong. Since capitol K is not used for another meaning this doesn’t create a serious confusion.

[@marklaurendet1861]

Interesting, but is cluster size more important, the amount of storage that the file takes up on your drive. Think I have that term correct ?

[@macmost]

Not sure what you mean. Maybe "Block?" You don't really need to worry about that.

[@toma1610]

Interesting note about the hard drives manufacturers. My concern about files sizes goes like this: why an apple pages file, with just text, is bigger than a MS Word file, with same content. Also, I use Wondershare converter. When I want to “reduce” the size of a big MOV file to mp4 SD definition, the output file is Larger! Even when I set up the settings “same as source”. Does Mac system have something to do with this? or is most related to the software developer?

[@macmost]

You'd need intimate understanding of the Word and Pages file structures to be able to answer that. It is probably less of a problem with larger files. When you compress a video, often the original is already well-compressed. So compressing more won't do anything, or even make the file bigger of the settings of the new file are at a higher bit rate.

[@NeilVitale]

Would rounding be why my "128GB" disk in my 2014 Macbook Pro always showed as 121GB in the OS? I tried doing the math and converting GiB to GB and GB to GiB but it never made any sense. Is it something like over-provisioning? I still have the SSD, but the laptop is already sold. Apparently you can convert from an NVME drive to a Macbook pro disk slot and also a take a Mac disk out of a Pro and with an adapter put it in an PCIe slot (but for some reason my HP desktop wouldn't boot from it - IDK why). Anyway, really curious about the 121GB issue, as I've never been able to find the answer, and Apple's site didn't really help.

[@josefhab8095]

Interesting explanation. Good to know.

[@ithinkitspickingupalittleb8011]

Goggle Drive was discontinued in 2017. Still, it’s mentioned in the subtitles at 0:37.

[@macmost]

Not sure what you mean. Google Drive is still very much around.

[@Dog_lover_Br1an]

Thank you. It was driving me nuts why the file was showing as 586.7 MB on upload to Telegram, but 625.2 MB on my computer. Downloaded the 586.7 MB from Telegram and downloads folder shows it as 625.2 MB. Went to iCloud to try and share a link for the original and iCloud shows the same file as 586.7 MB. I understand Mac and Telegram not using the same methodology. But why does Apple use one methodology for computer file sizes and another for its cloud software supposed to be used for storing those very same files???? Your explanation stopped my research of WTF was going on, much appreciated.

[@MarbsMusic]

What no bits?!? ;) I would have thought Mac being based on NeXT/BSD would have stuck with 1024 etc... As I just switch back to MacOS about a year ago I actually hadn't paid attention to file sizes though, this was a very enlightening video, thanks!

[@Kyurem_originale_Form]

So basically: Apple uses their sizes right and Dropbox/Windows/Google wrong. They would have to write MiB etc. For the average person it's maybe not a big deal and also better, because they often only know MB etc. and not MiB or Mb/Mbit or Mib/Mibit. (Sorry for mistakes. English is not my mother tongue.)

[@bbrendon]

Whats technically correct and correct by people in the computer industry differ. Most older people I talk to about this topic still think the binary number is correct because it was correct at one point before someone decided to change the definition.

[@mopm5188]

Great review 👍as always Can you explain to me why when I convert word to pages the size of the file increase dramatically

[@macmost]

Those are two very different file formats for two different apps. You can't compare them. For instance, Word depends a lot on a separate file with styles, while Pages stores this inside the document file.

[@mopm5188]

@@macmost thank you for your answer if you can do a short video on that it will be very helpful

[@desertpatient]

Thanks bunches

[@loisskiathitis8926]

A very useful video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary! 👏❤️

[@Lenny4400]

How to correct this? Mac to PC.

[@ph5915]

Hmm, I remember when I bought my 1st Mac in 1992, I think it was a 2600 one of the 1st PowerPC machines, the sales kid was explaining it to me and I think it only had a 60M hard disk and at the time on my PC clone I had the drive was much larger. Then he showed me the file system and showed me that all of the files were so much smaller on the Mac than on the PC. He was a gold mine, he was a computer science major at our University and between he and his g/f at the time they had like a dozen computers in their home, half PC's, half Mac's. What he showed me just completely convinced me I thought Mac's were superior and I never looked back. I had to use PC's for work for years and years and just thought of them as 'blah, tools.' But they never impressed me. Still don't.

[@sherwansheikhmousa2766]

How many bites is a giggity ?

[@JS-jh4cy]

Lots

[@lancejohnson7253]

I always thought a byte was 8 bits?

[@macmost]

A byte is 8 bits, yes.

[@radman8321]

@@macmost It's also two nibbles.