what an embarrassing way to start one's legal career

Petitioner:

David Bitton 5401 Av Coolbrook Montreal, QC H3X 2L3 (514) 487-7847

Law Firm:

Me James R. Nazem Nazem, LEvy-Soussan, Lauzon, Ratelle 1010 de la Gauchetiere W., Suite 1315 Montreal (Ville-Marie), Quebec, H3B 2B2 Tel: (514) 392-0000 ext. 23 Fax: (514) 878-4761 E-mail: jrnazem@nlslr.com

Dear Lord. Please save us from law students. Thanks.

This doesn't have anything to do with anyone deceiving anybody. Drive manufacturers are not lying, and neither is Apple. It's not a question of space being taken up by the iPod's OS, it's just decimal notation vs binary notation.

8,000,000,000 bytes = 8GB in base 10 = 7.45GB in base 2. They are the exact same number. No bytes were lost, nothing is missing, nobody is lying. It's just two different ways to express the exact same number. You can easily check it yourself. Take 8,000,000,000 and divide three times by 1024 and you'll the number expressed in base 2 gigabytes. By the same token, to get that number expressed in base 10 gigabytes, you divide three times by 1000.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatBinary-c.html

Incidentally, there was a class action suit here in the US against the hard drive manufacturers over this same thing, and I understand the suit was thrown out.

Man I am pissed. My truck advertises a 16 gallon Tank yet I ran it almost bone dry and it actually had 17 gallons capacity. My feelings are hurt. I need to sue!

What a moron. If I was apple I would kindly shake my head and say this.

"Please send us your iPod and we will make sure it has 8G of space on it."

Then I would take the iPod HD and wipe it clean and leave it unformatted. Then send it back to him.

"There you go. 8G of space now that the OS and partioning has been erased."

Only problem is without the "7.5%" of pre-installed software and it will no longer be an iPod. It would be an iBrick.

David Bitton head plead insanity on this case.

Maybe he is too busy blow drying his hair in the shower or pouring hot coffee in his lap looking for a quick dime.

I wish someone would start a website that listed the top 50 morons in the world. THese lawsuits would fill the top ten I am sure.

We'd gone almost 3 days without lawsuit coverage. I was going through withdrawls!

The technical definition of a gigabyte is actually 1024 MegaBytes, which in turn in 1024 KB, which is 1024 bytes. So it turns out the the advertised 8GB is actually 6.87% LESS than the actual storage capacity. Go figure.

Since I'm sure his 7.45 is a technical number (7,999,376,588.8) compared to Apple's advertised # of bytes (8,000,000,000) it's actually only a .007% difference.

Wadepeeler has it right, but it isn't really a problem of stating numbers in base 2, but in powers of 2.

There has always been confusion around this issue since bytes are conveniently expressed in quantities that are indeed powers of 2 (but not base 2). The closest value to 1000 that is a power of 2 is 1024, and so that is defined as a kilobyte. A gigabyte is hence 1024^3, or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Divide that number into a true 1 billion and you get 0.931.

Now take a drive advertised as 8GB and multiply it by that number. Surprise! 7.45 "real" GB.

It is just a question of convention that confuses customers and ALL computer and disk companies have ALWAYS done it. To single out Apple is nuts.

I do agree that there should be some proper disclaimer, but that should apply to all disks made by everyone.

Like advertised storage has EVER been available space. You would have to sue EVERYONE.

I would be embarrased to be named as the plaintiff.

It has nothing to do with the advertised vs. available. Apple specifically mentions, ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE BOX, that "8GB is 8 billion whatevers, formatted capacity is less. " I think the only thing you could sue on is perhaps 'false advertising' (maybe they'll start sticking those little disclaimers on the screen like every car commercial does "Professional Driver. Closed Course. Don't ever attempt to drive a car for you could die!").

on Apple, apparently. It must suck for all these people who start frivolous lawsuits against Apple, not having a legal leg to stand on and all.

this is why the industry lacks companies that actually break new ground.

Each of these lawsuits could have been waged against any computer company but apple has soooooooooooooooooooooo much more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ on hand the lawyers are salivating and willing to come up with any malarky to steal a piece.

Ok ... mercelessly cut and pasted:

There are two slightly different definitions of gigabyte in general use:

* 1,000,000,000 bytes or 10^9 bytes is the decimal definition used in telecommunications (such as network speeds) and most computer storage manufacturers (such as hard disks and flash drives). This usage is compatible with SI. Quotes from Seagate: "The storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal", and, "One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity". Similar quotes are found on the websites of other storage manufacturers. * 1,073,741,824 bytes, equal to 1024³, or 230 bytes. This is the definition commonly used for computer memory and file sizes. Since 1999, the IEC recommends that this unit should instead be called a gibibyte (abbreviated GiB). Microsoft uses this definition to display hard drive sizes, as do most other operating systems. Every operating system uses this definition when referring to the size of files. By this definition, there are 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte.

The actual capacity of the device IS 8 gigabytes using the first definition. Apple clearly states on all packaging the definition and that the device will have less capacity after formatting etc as mentioned before.

This case doesn't even have a leg to stand on. I'd be surprised if it even makes it to court and hope that they realize that before wasting any more money.

It wouldn't be such a problem if Apple and other manufacturers didn't use the same acronyms for two completely different things. When getting 2 GB of memory, you'd be pissed if it weren't 2048 MB or 2097152 KB, but just 2000 MB . But with disks, 2 GB is 2000 MB or 2000000 KB.

But, then again, I wonder if the guy counted the built-in memory buffer as part of his memory?

Are these real, or is it a marketing ploy?

That hit the nail on the head. It's an 8GB model because it has an 8GB memory card that was made another company. If you want to sue, so that company for not providing a full 8GB.

Beyond that, if they want the software deleted off of their iPod, we can do that. That will give them the rest.

I really, really hope that Apple counter sues them for the bother.

That hit the nail on the head. It's an 8GB model because it has an 8GB memory card that was made another company. If you want to sue, so that company for not providing a full 8GB.

You can sue them too if you want. But Apple (or whatever company that's advertising a product) is responsible to make sure the product has the capacity it says its supposed to have. So if Apple released a bunch of 8GB iPods and they only had 4GB of storage in them, you'd go after Apple to get what you were promised. No one (but Apple) would care that the flash drive maker mis-marked their memory.

Its actually the metric system. Giga is a prefix used in industry elsewhere such as in "gigahertz". They didn't make this up as a marketing ploy :-)

Because computer systems use on/off bits to represent memory locations a reference variable, on the other hand, will be some power of 2. Therefore totally technically speaking ... 1024 or 2^10 bits isn't the traditional Kilo etc etc.

In the traditional definitions:

prefix decimal abbr kilo 10^3 k mega 10^6 M giga 10^9 G tera 10^12 T

These prefixes are part of the SI or Standard International system.

Actually a little known fact is that the European Union has a directive banning non-SI markings after December 31, 2009 on any goods imported into the European Union. In that case if Apple *didn't* mark the packages as they currently do .. they might face some trouble from them!

Since memory chip capacity is usually reported using the "powers of two" versions of mega- and giga-, it seems a little strange that even the flash-based iPhone and iPod Touch are using the "powers of ten" form of "giga".

I can't see why chip manufacturers would even make an 8GB chip that only held 8,000,000,000 bytes, instead of 8,192,000,000 bytes. Because of the way memory is addressed in RAM/ROM chips, they have to use the same size registers and same number of addressing lines, no matter if the chip held 8 * 1024^3 bytes or 8 * 1000^3 bytes.

So why *don't* the capacities of the flash-based players match up with the capacity of similarly-marketed RAM chips?

Not saying it's lawsuit-worthy by any stretch - I'm just curious from an engineering standpoint.

When you put computerised devices into the hands of people that have never used anything but gadgets before. I'll wager that the person bringing the suit was using a plain ol cell phone before, and have never really been exposed to something that has actual storage capacity. Apple's new issue with its newfound popularity is that they now have to cater to the morons. They made a device so easy to use, the brain dead want one too.

I've run into this at the computer store I work at, we sell $300 computers there and we get so many people bringing computers back after they discover that they can't play World of Warcraft on it..."But I paid $300 for this thing" I usually look at them wanting to say "exactly....you paid $300 for this thing." LCD in that store really means "Lowest Common Denominator"

I appologize to any self proclaimed morons I might have offended

disregard the "8,192,000,000" in my post. It should have been "8,589,934,592" (8 * 1024^3)

csi95 posted, "If you get a 320 Gb hard drive on a new Dell, you don't actually get 320Gb of free space when it arrives. Windows takes up some of the space".

And? That's not the reason the HD is not 320GB. Even if you reformatted, it would not have 320GB.

Read the other posts about the math of how they figure the drive size.

Well, I think the terms they use with computer memory being base-10 names is purly so we all know what we're talking about, simply a name given to those numbers it close to being a power of 10 thing. Can you image if computers had to put in the labels the actual storage capacity in bytes on the box? And there are no names in base 2 for all those graduated levels? Unless someone makes it up. 1024 bytes can now be referred to as a slezalbyte instead of a Kilobyte.

Actually, in this day and age corporations would sponsor the names 1024 bytes should now be known as a Petcobyte

8 bits to a byte! Always has been. It wasn't as much of an issue in the old days of 640k disks, and 5 meg hard drives. Hardly even noticable. I think it was around the time that I got a 20 gig drive did I really say "wow, those two bits really make a difference."

I really do think the industry should address the conventions they use to size the drives up when sold to consumers, but it wouldn't matter much anyway... i've heard people call them "jiggerbits". Yes, seriously.

I do think two other things should happen however. The plaintiff should be required to pay court costs and reimburse the company they sue and their suit fails.

Second, all law schools should be closed for 30 years. This the heard. A while down the road, the lawyers will be forced to take real cases again.

that's right it holds EXACTLY 8 Trumpbytes.

Why can't companies be honest and state the true value of their product. Screen sizes? Under or over the bezel/diagonal or horizontal. It's all deception and we have poor and weak consumer legislation to blame for it.

Yes AAPL are a target for suits now. But they also dish it out themselves.

= 50 cents.

Usable screen of a CRT monitor was never the size as advertised. Sounds like a world class action lawsuit there.

Oh wait, the electricity in my house is not exactly 120 volts.

Only in America... Uhh... Errr... Umm... Canada.

Usable screen of a CRT monitor was never the size as advertised. Sounds like a world class action lawsuit there.

Um, you're 10 years too late. That lawsuit went through and got settled on. Turns out the video manufacturers were lying through their collective teeth (thus, if you now bought a CRT, it would say something like '17" (16" visible)').

The difference is that Apple and other drive sellers actually are putting the correct information on the box. You just have to read it.

LAWSUIT = how nature says : "Moron, stay away"

Seriously, this one ought to be short, as Apple very much discloses all capacity information, and is accurate in labeling something as '8 gigabytes'

8 gb = 8,000,000,000 bytes 1 byte = 1024 bits

8,000,000,000 / 1024 = 7,812,500 kb 7,812,500 / 1024 = 7,629.39 mb 7,629.39 / 1024 = 7.45 gb

Apple is providing full disclosure, including conversion rates and references in their advertising.

Judgement for the defendant. Next.

... like this, wasting precious tax dollars- yours, mine, everyone's- on frivilous lawsuits, trying to shake down some huge corporation just to get thousand- even millions- of dollars THEY DIDN"T EARN! And we pay the price twice- once with the waste of our tax dollars, and then again when these same corporations have to hike their prices to offset these stupid lawsuits! As taxpayers (that's all of us), we shouldn't be just sitting back and rolling our eyes- we should be hunting people like this idiot down and yelling at thim, in one loud voice, "SHUT UP, YOU MORON!" Perhaps embarrassing them in public would be enough to show them how ridiculous they are.

tsmelker wrote, "... like this, wasting precious tax dollars"

How exactly are your tax dollars wasted on frivolous lawsuits such as this?

geez louise.

anyone who has ever formated a HD should know by Now, regardless of the OS, Formatted HD Capacity is NEVER equal to the the Advertised Capacity.

My 120GB Hd no matter how hard I tried never formatted to over 112GB and my 250GB HD formats to 232GB.

My New 80GB 5.5 Enhanced Video iPod has 74.5GB of capacity.

I Once Read somewhere I think it was at Slashdot, The reason HD's do not Format out to the Exact Number is because there is some Code or Data that the computer uses in the lowest levels. So no matter what, You Will Always Have less Drive Space.

My 1GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro = 912MB Free Space.

The Lawyers who took this case should be Flogged Publicly.

Stupidity, plain and simple! This guy should not use anything made in the 20th century. Stupid is as stupid does and this guy is just plain stupid. All storage devices have a disclaimer on them to let you know that once formatted the device will not show the full amount available in capacity.

Trying to get rich this way will NOT WORK!

cris ca wrote: "How exactly are your tax dollars wasted on frivolous lawsuits such as this?"

Well cris, who do you think pays for judges, courtrooms, bailiffs, and most of the legal system? They aren't exactly volunteering their time. Tax dollars do pay for the justice sytem.

I am absolutely shocked no one has been sued over this before. I've been baffled for years at how no one has ever asked the question of why their 120GB hard drive says it is 112GB.

This guy is the perfect example of why no self respecting IT person likes to work for law firms, they're all a bunch of arrogant, overpaid, idiots. They think that having a law degree means they know something, yet they don't even do the simple research to discover that both are 120 billion bytes, it's just a matter of one reported in hexadecimal & one in base 10.

The floor is so gonna get wiped with this guy, geesh.

Thanks, Trenchcoat, for helping to clarify- cris ca may not be old enough yet to pay taxes, or else he/she might live in Canada, and they might do things differently there.

In addition to our taxes supporting the legal system (at least here in America), they also support our politicians as well as the educational system. Which is why I always advocate reminding those idiots, in any of the institutions whom our tax dollars support, that they better not piss the taxpayers off. "The customer is always right", as they say-- except for cretins who involve themselves in ridiculous lawsuits like this. Perceived entitlement gone seriously wrong...

They're already pissing-off the tax-payer, but the tax-payer can't do squat. Watch our tax money for education go to waste: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA

If this guy owns a computer and did not sue the computer maker, then he already demonstrated that he is ok with the actual formatted capacity of hard disks being less than the advertised amount.

He has no case. This will never go to trial.

= 25 cents, not 50 cents as I first stated. although with inflation...

that can format a drive larger than it's physical capacity is in the works. ;) That's why this Canuck was confused. Maybe Apple should be more clear next time and advertise the iPod as a 7.43219 GB nano.

Are Canadian lawyers really that stupid to take on a case that they absolutely cannot win? As long as this guy that files the suit has to pay all legal and court fees when he loses the case, then that's fine with me.

The second half of Apple's qualifying statement, saying, "actual formatted capacity less", should cover them, IMHO (that's my 2 cents as a consumer). I recall rounds of lawsuits about a decade ago against HD manufacturers for the same basic reason this person is suing; the result was that the computer industry as a whole, including Apple, started qualifying capacity with the above boilerplate.

But if that statement's not enough to cover them, then how about the first part of Apple's qualifier? It states that "1GB = 1 billion bytes" -- well technically, 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30), but let's go with Apple's (somewhat dubious) definition for the moment, since that's another way they are qualify the storage capability of the iPod. In actuality, 8GB = 8,589,934,592 bytes.

The lawsuit it claiming that only 7.45GB is available on the 8GB ipod. Again, in actuality, that would be ~7,999,376,588.8 bytes. If you take Apple's definition of a gigabyte, multiply it by 8, then take the difference of the actual number of available bytes, you end up with ~623,411.2 missing bytes -- about 608.8k or about 99.992% of what Apple claims should be available if you disregard their follow up, "actual formatted capacity less" statement.

That tiny fraction might even be accounted by the limited precision of the claimed 7.45GB. Even a conservative 7.451GB gets you over the 8GB mark, by Apple's definition.

So, I think Apple is covered two ways: First with the obvious "actual formatted capacity less" qualifier and *possibly* even by the numbers -- by both the somewhat dubious definition of a GB and the margin of error in the 7.45GB number.

Whatever... back to work!

uh, hasn't the difference (has to do with how drive sizes are described vs. how they are formatted) been litigated over multiple times already?

This is just another reason to bomb Quebec back to the stone age and annex it as a new US national park. F'ers can't speak French or English properly...ha

Yes, we know the actual amount of space you "lose" because of this is small. And I expect that most of us realize that part of the drive is taken up with the formatting information itself, and then with the OS and software. None of that is the point.

The point is just this: a megabyte = 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes, regardless of who tells you otherwise, and false advertising is wrong. Because the drives never started out with the appropriate storage capacity in the first place, you "lose" even more. The amount you lose is a moot point.

Look at it this way. If you went to put gas in your car, and a gallon of gas turned out to be .97 gallons because the petroleum companies decided to make up a new unit of measurement and call it a "gallon" and then sell that at gas pumps, you would be pretty darn upset, even though the true difference was relatively small. This is effectively what the hard drive manufacturer's did. If I remember correctly (and I might not, it has been a long time), there was a lot of discussion in the industry about this when hard drives became widely available. The consensus was that the drive manufacturers were lying and had purposefully invented a new unit of storage capacity and called it a "megabyte" to defraud the public.

When should the consumer be angry about this? How about if a "megabyte" was only 900 bytes? 750? Why not 500? Consumers in general have far too much of a "let it slide" attitude, at least here in the states, and it lets companies get away with a lot which they shouldn't.

Still pretty stupid to make Apple the target of this lawsuit, but the heart of the case isn't frivolous.

It is disingenuous for computer makers to state one definition in marketing materials, but use another definition in software. Anyone who's worked with enterprise class storage knows not to trust silver tonged salesmen and their "gigabytes".

The person that brought up this lawsuit should be shot on the spot! What is the point of this anyway? It's not Apples fault, its the HD companies that use 1000 Bytes for a MB. But either way, this person won't see a penny as with almost all lawsuits, it will just feed the lawyer cage.

Many states in the U.S., although not the one I live in....but others, talk about the subject of false advertising...that what is clear and unambiguous in the advertisement, what a reasonable person would believe about it, is the standard by which an advertisement will be judged 'false' or not.

So, when Apple advertised 8gb, and when they place in the fine print...or somewhere completely different that the perosn may not have read at all, like on their website, the phrase: actual capacity may be less...that kind of 'legal fine printery'...absolutely wouldn't cover them.

They'd bring it up as part of the defense...but it could possibly not be enough to win the case.

Now this is Canada anyway...but pointing out that Apple, along with the rest of the industry, needs to bite the bullet and report real GB. The Apple 8SB. Not 8GB.

Now, its just a model number, and what is 8 storage bytes...if you want to know, you have to look it up. It's 7.45GB.

Apple likes the simplicity of specifyingn a FALSE value...but too bad. I favor the truth on these things, personally.

People that start these suits have s**t for brains and not much of that. If the courts made them pay the defendants legal fees if they fail, the peace and quiet would be mind boggling.

"The point is just this: a megabyte = 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes, regardless of who tells you otherwise"

I'm afraid this is wrong, and not just that you're off by a factor of 10**3. The National Institute of Standards, which sets the commercial systems of measurements says otherwise. See here:

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

You are referring to a Mebibyte. While the page notes that megabyte may refer to the base 2 usage, it must be pointed out as such on a case by case basis. So unless apple specifically says 8 gigabytes (base 2), it's 8,000,000,000 bytes.

Errrrrr. Yes, it is kilobytes, not bytes, no idea why I typed that (well, yes, I know why, I was hurrying :-)

But, you have avoided the point mostly by pointing out an admittedly silly error on my part which I made simply by being in a hurry and by ignoring the obvious intent of what I said.

A megabyte was always equal to 1024 kilobytes, not 1000 kilobytes. If memory serves, the hard drive industry essentially "made up" the "fact" that a megabyte was equal to only 1000 kilobytes to inflate the capacity of their drives. That is, they did it to lie, to you, to me, to everyone purchasing drives.

Seagate is currently the target of a class action concerning this.