Kirk McElhearn did an experiment, doing a clean install iOS 8 on a 16 GB iPad mini (first generation).
I did an experiment. I have an original iPad mini, and I hadn’t yet gotten around to updating it to iOS 8 (in part because the over-the-air updater told me it needed 4.9 GB in free space, and it’s only a 16 GB device, and I didn’t have enough free space). I loaded it with only iOS 8 and Apple’s apps. I installed all of Apple’s apps: the iWork apps, iMovie, Garage Band, Find My iPhone, Remote, etc.
After the install, Kirk was left with 8.27 gigs.
Go have a read, see what you think. I’m not troubled, as Kirk was, by the fact that the usable space is less than the advertised space. This has been the way of the world since the beginning of personal computing. Devices are advertised with RAM and hard drive/SSD numbers, showing capacity, not usable space. After all, as soon as you lay a volume directory on a device, you lose space.
That quibble aside, 8.27 gigs left on a 16 gig device is pretty low. You could argue that you don’t have to install the recommended but non-mandatory apps that Apple prompts you to install, but that move would only buy you a few gigs of space at most.
Apple should simply not sell 16 GB devices any more. If, after installing just the basics, there’s only have that space available (I know, I already lost 3 GB because of marketing), then users can’t put a lot of content on them. Many won’t care, but once you start downloading a few games, you get into a situation where there’s not enough room to apply updates, because they need so much free space.
Tricky logic, that. I would change the argument to this: People should simply not buy 16 GB devices any more. Also, to me, it’s photos and media storage that bring me to my device limit, much more so than games.
His math only works if he truly needs all of the Apple apps. And if he does, 16GB isn’t the right device for him. There’s a reason those aren’t preinstalled on the 16GB models.
But the base should be 32GB these days…
I don’t understand his logic. He fills up 3GB of space with Apple’s optional apps and then says “Only 8GB left!”. Why not fill up the entire device with apps and then say “Oh wow there’s no space free”. Apple prompt you to install them but you’re not obligated to install, nor keep them after install.
The issue many people have had with other platforms is that around 50% of the device space has been taken up with data that cannot be reclaimed. I do think the 16GB model is getting a bit low now but iOS is still pretty efficient in size on that device (around 23%), much lower than the competing devices people have complained about.
Sounds like another vote for my idea of “True Storage.”
https://twitter.com/SumocatS/status/512554305497595904
If you buy an “iPad 16GB”, it does not mean that you have exactly 16GB of usable space. It simply means you bought a device of a certain “class”. Rename the devices sizes to “iPad base”, “iPad deluxe” and “iPad ultra” and it’s a better representation of what the GB number means.
Unless you add two separate storage areas, one for data and the other for the OS and apps, it’s impossible to advertise the actual “usable” space, simply due to the way software works. And if Apple did include separate storage areas, there’d be all kinds of complaints about wasted, unusable space, limited space to install apps etc. etc. Nobody can win this either way.
Garage Band needs a lot of sound files, and this type of file is not small. If you need space, and are not a musician, get rid of GB to gain GB 🙂
Two comments. First, since OS X 10.6, Apple doesn’t show a difference in hard drive size. If you recall back then, your hard drives suddenly seemed larger.
The second is that I didn’t even got the the media/photos thing; I wanted to see how much space there was before syncing anything, taking photos, or adding any apps. I totally agree that it’s the media that takes up space; that’s why, when I bought an iPhone 5s, I got a 64 GB model, the largest available.
Not a terrible idea, but not great either. To avoid getting into hot water down the road (Apple doesn’t quite know yet what space requirements iOS 9, 10, 11 will have in a few years), they’d need to drastically over-provision the device today, which increases its cost.
As it is, you have the option of buying a larger device which does cost more today, but at least you’re able to use the extra storage at least partially. What you’re proposing is that Apple sells larger devices today which cost more, but without users being able to use half that extra space.
My experiment was to install everything that Apple touts. Naturally, not everyone needs all those apps, but lots of people may still install them. And, the “Other” data cannot be reclaimed. In my test, it’s only 1.3 GB, but during the process of adding the optional apps, it ballooned to over 2 GB at one point, because an app wasn’t copying correctly. If you’ve got any experience with iOS, you know that “Other” space can often be several GB.
What do you mean by “Apple doesn’t show a difference in hard drive size”? Are you referring to the simple change from reporting 1MB as 1024 bytes to 1MB = 1000 bytes?
Yes, a hard drive today shows up in the Finder as the same size as its marketed size. As I say in the article, my iMac’s 256 GB SSD shows as 251 GB, which is the full 256 minus the recovery partition and some other stuff. My 2 TB hard drives show up in this Finder as 2 TB each.
In other words, they made the change years ago on the desktop, but they still report different sizes on mobile devices.
Overall I’ll have to give you a “m’eh” on the whole thing. 🙂
All this is nothing new. You’d need to reinvent how computers work to make this “issue” go away. There’s no point in bean counting each individual byte; either everything you need fits onto your device, or you need to buy the next larger device, period. Specific numbers are pretty irrelevant here.
I will certainly give you that 16GB is an extremely tight fit for anything these days, and Apple would do good starting at at least 32GB.
The low end devices are still handy for developers who probably only need them for testing their app(s). But agree that it should now be 32GB min, 64, 128, 256 on the iPhone and the iPad.
One of my conclusions is just that: they shouldn’t even sell a 16 GB device any more. But also that their apps are bloated. I’m sure a lot of the space in the iWork apps is taken up by templates and language files, but it’s 1 GB for those, and another GB for iMovie and iPhoto.
Optimising for size is hard. They could probably shave off a few MB here and there if they really put their mind to it, but there’s a cost-benefit ratio and we don’t know at what point they are on that scale. Maybe it’s pretty much already as tight as it gets for the features they want to provide. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not just including large files in there for shits and giggles. 😉
How any multi-million selling consumer computing devices has Kirk McElhearn sheparded to market? If that number is not >0 then he needs to STFU about what “Apple should simply not” do. The proof that these guys know what they’re doing is reported every 90 days or so.
It doesn’t take a Wharton MBA to see that 16MB iOS devices do something Apple really wants them to, make it possible for the price-constrained to enter the Apple ecosystem, even if it’s at a sub-optimal experience. I think back a bit to when my niece was about 13 and wanted an iOS device. She scrimped and saved all of her limited allowance and babysitting income to get an iPhone added to her parents family share plan I knew the rock-bottom model was a bad choice, for me and most people, but a higher capacity model would have been a longer wait for her (and let’s face it, most people aren’t great at delayed gratification). So, even though she had less room for music and apps and media, and she has to spend, OK—waste, a lot of time moving data on and off her device, she can FaceTime with her uncle on a regular basis ensuring that those iTunes gift cards keep arriving on a regular basis. I know the argument is that the sub-optimal experience will turn off some people and they’ll go Android for the next device, but with 84% retention levels, I just don’t see that happening.
Nah, the big brains in Cupertino know what they’re doing.
The problem with your “conclusions” is that, as far as I know, you’ve never taken an incredibly successful consumer electronics device to market. Of course I never have either, which is why I try to avoid telling the guys who actually have what they should, or should not, do.
You’ve made that comment twice. So you’re saying that one cannot make any criticism of a company or its products if one hasn’t made and shipped the same products? Seriously?
Have you every criticized a sports team or a movie? Every won a Super Bowl or an Oscar?
How absurd. Your look at space being used up in no way supports a conclusion that certain apps are “bloated”, which implies poorly written apps that use space needlessly or without focus.
To support that completely unrelated conclusion you’d need to, you know, study the apps you’re talking about….which you didn’t do. At all.
No, you haven’t bought 16 GB of usable space. Because Apple counts the device as 16 GB, but doesn’t count the size of apps and media files the same way.
Agreed – it’s nonsensical to include optional productivity apps which are not installed by default. Why not include Infinity Blade III?
But his sails deflate if he were to exclude them.
Meanwhile, my dad loves his 16gb iPad Air. He’s not into many apps and certainly doesn’t use garage band.
That’s what I’m saying. The specific number “16” is virtually meaningless. All it means is that the iPad 16 has less space than the iPad 32 has less space than the iPad 64. It’s more a “device class” than a meaningful number. How does a normal user work with these numbers anyhow? Does anyone really know how many GB they need? No. We can only tell from experience that “16” is a bit low in daily use and that “128” is plenty. Those numbers and their relationship to “usable” keep changing anyway over the years.
Startup X may release a blockbuster app tomorrow which nobody can live without, but which requires tons and tons of space on your device. Then it’s irrelevant how space is counted or what numbers specifically are involved; all that matters is that suddenly your device became too small, even if it was fine yesterday.
Yeah, not if they want to be taken seriously. If you’d said, “I’d never buy a 16GB iOS device forYeah, not if they want to be taken seriously.
As for myself, I know what my 40-yard time, vertical leap, and curve ball look like, so NO, I do NOT criticize those who are good enough to make millions of dollars per year with theirs.
I’m still trying to figure out what fills up “Other” on my iOS devices.
http://hammonwry.com/mysterious-other/
I think Apple should sacrifice some profit to become a better company. Make 32GB the new bottom end.
Don’t forget all the photos in iMessages that you can’t reclaim unless you go find each and every one you’ve sent and delete them individually. I had great hope when Apple said they had a feature that auto-deletes after a certain time. But guess what? Photos aren’t included! And they are the main culprit!
Sidenote: I know you can select multiple messages to delete, but guess what? If you keep scrolling past what is loaded and auto-load the next batch of messages, any photos you’ve already selected are cleared. So you have to make sure to delete your selected photos before you move on to the next batch.
Except my solution addresses the update problem people ran into with iOS 8. Keeping the OS storage separate from content storage means you can update regardless of how much content or empty space you have. Buying a larger device is a band-aid solution. My solution means the update would just work.
As for provisioning, based on past and current problems with iOS updates, the over-provisioning should not require more than 8GB, which is cheaper to add than simply doubling the total storage size. Add a 8GB chip for the OS and advertise the storage space (16/64/128 GB) as “True Storage” because it’s what you actually get for storage. Added bonus: Android vendors won’t be able to match it.
The problem is still that future OS versions will likely keep getting bigger as they add more features. And future OS versions will be tailored to future iPhone iterations, which will also keep getting more storage by default.
Reserving 8GB for OS + updates today may foreseeably be enough for iOS 9, but iOS 10 is a question mark. It’s easy for Apple to paint themselves into a corner, where they want to make iOS 10 available to all devices (say, 4S+), yet cannot fit the update into the limited 8GB space reserved for that.
It’s an engineering struggle either way. There are so many variables and priorities to weigh on so many fronts (cost, complexity of system design, future upgradability, marketing, testing costs, development time and effort etc.), I don’t think the option they chose is very bad overall.
Don’t be so dramatic. Apple has maintained a 4 year cycle on iOS update for years, keeping iPhone models updated up to a year after it is discontinued. This is a planned future, not the unforeseeable unknown.
As for 8GB being enough, the engineers already know to treat 8GB total as a hard ceiling because the low-end iPhone, currently the 5c, only ships with 8GB total storage. And as I pointed out, Apple’s update cycle keeps iPhone models on the
latest iOS version up to a year after they are discontinued. The 8GB limit is anticipated years in advance.
Furthermore, 8GB is the stated minimum free space required to update to OS X Mavericks and Yosemite. If the iOS engineers cannot keep their update requirements below OS X requirements, they need to try harder.
OK, fair enough. I still think it’s conceptually weird to reserve a whole lot of space just for upgrades. Every single inch and thing in an iPhone comes with a cost. “Wasting” an entire memory chip (or portion thereof) just for a one-time upgrade doesn’t sound very economical.
Yes, this is the cost of making the update process just work.
Alternately, I had also proposed that Apple institute an automated method that would back up to iCloud (waiving storage fees if necessary), clean reset the device, update iOS, and restore from backup. This would also get around the space requirement, but I find the extra chip is a more elegant option with less chance of corruption.
BTW, it’s only a “one-time upgrade” if you bought the low-end model. New iPhone models are expected to get the next three updates.
The chip will still lay dormant for most of the year, which, again, doesn’t sound economical and something Apple (or most other companies) would do. Especially since you can also update via iTunes, which renders most of the storage concerns moot. I know, that’s not as elegant as an OTA update, but it’s also not very elegant to have a mostly useless extra chip in the device (from an engineering perspective).
To be clear: I’d like it if they did it, I’m just saying why they probably won’t.
Let’s not forget that an OTA major update now requires 5GB of free space as well, meaning with a clean OS, all of Apple’s prompted-to-install apps, and the ability to actually apply major updates OTA, that leaves 3 gigs of actual usable space.
This may not be a problem for anybody here, since you all know how to connect to iTunes to apply updates, you know how to reclaim space, you know you shouldn’t buy the 16GB model. Guess what? This isn’t about you. So forget you.
This is a problem about Apple claiming that they put user experience first and foremost, and then abandoning their base model of their flagship product by not upgrading the storage along with the other models to keep up with increased usage, which seems to be a blatant money grab to increase ASP.
John Gruber said it well, although a little lenient with his choice of words.
Quote: Apple has long used three-tier pricing structures within individual product categories. They often used to label them “Good”, “Better”, and “Best”. Now, with these 16 GB entry-level devices, it’s more like “Are you sure?”, “Better”, and “Best”.
http://daringfireball.net/2014/10/ipad_air_2
I’d personally call it “Crap”, “Better”, and “Best”. Simply put, the 16GB doesn’t belong in Apple’s flagship lineup in this day and age. Sure, Apple may have their reasons, but if that is what Apple’s bar is for quality and experience, I don’t trust them any more.
Tim Cook at WSJD Live (starting with the question at 30:30)
“We develop things as low a price as we can go while maintaining the quality and experience that we want to do, and we’ll never fall below that bar, no matter what. Because we think that doing so makes us a company other than Apple.”
http://www.wsj.com/video/tim-cook-at-wsjd-live/C48FC1F0-8E23-4592-8D9A-D08CD70E438F.html?KEYWORDS=tim%20cook
Okay, I don’t think you understood the point of the chip. It’s for the OS, not just updates. It will be very active but mostly empty as iOS itself takes up about 1 GB. I had previously considered 4 GB as an option, but then iOS 8 killed the possibility and I reworked the idea to include update space. (It was conceived prior to iOS 8.)
As for iTunes updates, that doesn’t help people without current PCs or Macs, which is quite possible since iOS shipments passed Windows shipments.
Now, I agree with you on why they wouldn’t do this, but you and, more importantly, Apple need to think about the customer aspect, not the engineering. Apple makes the update system “just work” for all customers and gets a branded feature the competition is not designed to duplicate. That’s a win-win.
No no, I get it. But using 1 GB of an 8 GB chip is “mostly dormant” in my book. Again, the margins in an iDevice are tight (engineering wise, maybe not so much price wise), do we know what consequences this extra chip brings in terms of all other complexity; again, for a feature that’s used about once a year?
Honestly? The intersection of people who need iWork and people who need Garageband is probably quite small, and doesn’t include the people who should be buying a 16GB device. The same thing happens if they need to install, say, MS Office and djay. Doesn’t matter who the publisher is; if you need a fair number of apps, you need to buy space for them.
I agree with you that it’s nearly shameful to be selling a 16GB device at this point. The number of apps used and the sizes of apps have risen rather dramatically for many people. But you’re not helping the cause by citing an artificially created condition.
I would say that 8.2 gigs is surprisingly good considering that the install included the Apple Apps. Garageband takes up a lot of space everywhere.
I find that media files try to dominate my mobile storage.
And, frankly, 16gigs is just too little for the modern era.
“I’d personally call it ‘Crap’, ‘Better’, and ‘Best’.” Which is fine if you’ve got enough money. For some people that same continuum is “Possible”, “Maybe next time”, and “Yeah, but I’d rather make sure my kid has clothes that fit”. Yes, everyone’s user experience would be better with max storage, but that’s often not an option. If a 16GB device lets someone enter the ecosystem with current gen. h/w that otherwise couldn’t that’s good for them, for Apple, and ultimately the ecosystem. These are people who WANT to be a part of it, even if they have less space on their device.
That’s a completely different issue and Apple has an answer for that: the dated models with even less storage. I understand that the C models are the gateway model so I’m not talking about them at all. We’re talking about Apple’s latest and greatest flagship phone here.
According to the latest NAND Flash prices, there is very little difference in price between 16GB and 32GB, literally a couple cents difference per component. So either Apple has mountains of 16GB Flash components that they need to get rid of (highly doubtful considering their ability to negotiate on whatever terms they want), or they simply decided that ASP was more important than user experience.
You are completely incorrect. Your recovery HD is only 650MB. Take a look at your System Information. The hard drives on your Mac are listed in GB, not GiB. So the 256GB drive is really only 251.
On iOS devices they are doing the same thing but they must also be subtracting the space the OS takes because the capacity of my 128GB iPhone 6 plus is only 114GB. That is too big of a loss to be explained away by the difference between GB and GiB.
The current 16/64/128 lineup on iOS devices is blatantly manipulative. Why does Apple need to screw me to jack up their ASP? They’ve already got by far the best ASP in the business. Obviously, this pisses me off.
“Apple has an answer for that: the dated models with even less storage.” Is hardly a solution for user experience problems, although I admit that option exists.
Let’s be clear, aside from holding less content and having to update via tether to iTunes (a positive not a negative in my book) the “user experience” of a 16GB device vs a higher capacity device of the same type shouldn’t be any different. You can’t run your games any faster, you can only keep more of them on the device at any give time. The 16GB option lets someone sacrifice capacity for current hardware if they need to make a trade-off. If you’ve got limited funds at any given moment, a 16GB device lets you buy-in to the ecosystem, on the current generation hardware, at a lower price-point. How is that a bad thing?
As for the ASP thing, Apple isn’t a charity. They kind of have a fiduciary responsibility to keep that as high as they can. Apple’s bean-counters are as good as anyone else’s, given the amount of practice they get probably much better, so if they see, or even think 16GB current devices are losing to 32GB 5s or, more importantly, Android devices we’ll see a change in the future. So you might be right, but only if all of a sudden the 32GB 5S disappears.
Did you install the optional instruments into Garage Band, too?
I agree with you that Apple shouldn’t even sell 16GB devices, but installing Pages (278 MB), Numbers (243 MB), Keynote (461 MB), iMovie (643 MB) and Garage Band (624 MB) at once doesn’t seem like a reasonable test.
(Note: These are App Store sizes; presumably, the apps decompress larger than this.)
No, I didn’t launch Garage Band; I assume it asks for optional instruments at launch. Thanks for pointing out the numbers; they are, indeed, different. I was looking at the sizes in iTunes, but to use Pages as an example, it’s 265 MB in iTunes, but 385 MB on my iPhone. So, yes, they decompress.
Ouch, yeah, that’s pretty much brutal. Arguably, Apple should show the decompressed size there instead.
I just bought a 16GB iPhone 5S when their price dipped prior to the iPhone 6. I knew it was a mistake, but that’s the magic time when the difference you pay above and beyond the contract is huge. It’s hard to justify getting the 16GB iPhone 5S for less than $100, but the 32GB for over $200. And my wife hasn’t filled it yet. 🙂
As for the size difference: I’m seeing 278 MB for Pages (iOS) in iTunes for Mac. Are you seeing 265 MB on iOS?
This is true. The most you can really say is the apps are “large.” While the iMovie download weighs in at 643 MB, Find My iPhone is 5.9 MB.
The difference is quite obviously the templates included with iMovie. And yes, maybe those should be split off. 643 MB is a pretty big minimum size.
…Garage Band is 624 MB base and that doesn’t include everything it can install. I assume that’s loops, but still. BIG.
Can we at least agree on two points?
1. Apple claims that their product strategy is driven by the user experience first and foremost. (See Tim Cook quote from previous comment)
2. The user experience is not just the net sum of the hardware specs.
If we can’t agree on those basic things, I don’t see any reason to continue this discussion.
While I agree that there are things apple could do to reduce bloat like not making us download every language pack, Siri voice etc, this is not really a valid test. No one is forced to download Pages etc
If the experiment is to see how much space a user has for what a user chooses to put, those apps were still your choice and shouldn’t be included. That’s simple logic
I think it’s not entirely useful to compare an iPhone to a PC, and point out that PCs are sold by advertising total space, rather than available space. After all, all of the space in a PC is actually available to you, at least in theory. You can install a small Ubuntu distro or something, and be left with 99.9% of the space in the PC.
The iPhone’s space, on the other hand, is not available to you. There’s nothing you can do to make use of all 16GB in an iPhone. What’s more, iPhones are much closer to an appliance than a PC, so talking about theoretical (completely useless in real life) technical specs makes much less sense than with a PC.
I think we should hold Apple to a higher standard here. Advertising a 16GB iPhone as as 16 GB iPhone is like advertising it as having two months of battery life — which is only true if you don’t use it at all.
How many multi-million selling novels has matthewmaurice written? None? Then he needs to STFU about what other people write on the Internet.
I think you have a little trouble with your analogy there, Sparky.
hi there great idrea of a seperate os flash storage and main storage concpt