I admire David Bitton’s gumption. His chutzpah, as my Jewish relatives would say. Having discovered that the capacity of his newly purchased 8GB iPod nano was some 7.5% lower than advertised (thanks to the difference between advertised capacity and actual capacity), the Canadian law student (ah, of course) decided to sue. But he’s not asking for millions of dollars; he’s asking merely to have the price of his iPod refunded or, barring that, a refund of 7.5% of the purchase price (plus $75 punitive damages, so Apple learns their lesson).
It’s true that Apple does say on its tech specs page “1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.” But it’s also true that they splash those capacity numbers all over their website, marketing materials, even their packaging. And they do it because advertising it as the “7.43GB iPod nano” would just make people giggle.
I suspect Apple would be perfectly willing to settle with Bitton monetarily, but I don’t know if they’re likely to change their game as far as advertising capacity goes. Western Digital got slapped with a similar suit last year, but a look at their products shows that they’re still using the 1 GB = 1 billion bytes logic. I wouldn’t expect Apple to drop their clean, sexy marketing scheme any time soon.
I think a big challenge for this lawsuit is that the proper use of giga is as a decimal prefix. So, the argument needs to be that Apple's advertising, although technically correct, runs contrary to popular understanding.
I wonder if David owns any Laptops or Desktop computers? (He is a student.) I wonder if he just failed to notice that the hard drive in those products also has an "actual capacity" of 93%+-. And this has been the case with all hard drives since large capacity drives hit the scene (1990 and earlier).
Apple also has a history with getting burnt by stating {"true capacity" vs " actual capacity, remember 1984-1990+-, when Apple sold 15" monitors that had a 15" viewable area, and all the PC manufactures sold the SAME monitor as a 17" monitor (measurement of tube) even though theirs also had a 15" viewable area?
Apple stuck to the "truth" for years, but finally had to embrace the mis-truth as everyone kept saying "why buy their 15" monitor, when I can get a 17" monitor for a little cheaper". doh!
the free market does not encourage these Truths, and with Sony even claiming their 10mb mp3 player could hold 10,000 songs, while Apples (10mb) mp3 player could only hold 2000... Apple stuck to their guns there (a song is 4 minutes long, and compressed at 128, not the 3 min and 32 which Sony called their standard).
That's just dumb. Anyone who has bought a computer, a hard drive, or a device with a hard drive anytime in the past 20 years knows that a 1 gig is not 1000 megs.
What an idiot.
This has been the case for as long as capacity has been advertised, and exactly what the disclaimers are for. Still, it's like compounding interest: as we've grown from KB to GB, the discrepancy has gone from 2.4% to 7.4%.
Besides 1GB is not a billion bytes.
1 gigabyte = 1 073 741 824 bytes.
He should have sued for more than 7.5%!
The best outcome he can expect is for operating systems to adopt hard drive makers' definition for GB. After all, he's saying that the ads are wrong and the computer is correct--says who? Maybe his OS is misreporting the capacity.
Well perhaps now I can go and sue every hard drive maker for misrepresenting hard drive capacity when I buy an 80G hard drive and only get 74.21 gigabytes.
Lawsuits like these are just ludicrous and should be laughed at.
If Apple even entertains his suit, they'd be setting a dangerous precedent.
Well perhaps now I can go and sue every hard drive maker for misrepresenting hard drive capacity when I buy an 80G hard drive and only get 74.21 gigabytes.
Lawsuits like these are just ludicrous and should be laughed at.
If Apple even entertains his suit, they'd be setting a dangerous precedent.
As I've said many, many times before - especially to family members and friends who complain about about it being "misleading":
When will someone sue the lumber industry? If I buy an eight foot 2x4 I *should* get 768 sq. in. of wood. But I *only* get 504! Why is a "two by four" only 1.5x3.5"? And don't get me started about the problems you'll run into if your house was built before the early '70s and you need to fix a wall: your existing studs are probably 1.75x3.75!
As I've said many, many times before - especially to family members and friends who complain about about it being "misleading":
When will someone sue the lumber industry? If I buy an eight foot 2x4 I *should* get 768 sq. in. of wood. But I *only* get 504! Why is a "two by four" only 1.5x3.5"? And don't get me started about the problems you'll run into if your house was built before the early '70s and you need to fix a wall: your existing studs are probably 1.75x3.75!
I think the main issue is that apple uses a binary definition of a Gb for marketting purpose and i tunes uses the correct decimal definition of a Gb
let them be at least concistent regardless of what they allege a Gb is but not both definitions