Timeline for How is it possible that they used to type "Mb" when they meant "MB" in printed computer magazines in the 1990s?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
23 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 20, 2021 at 12:25 | comment | added | PcMan | The media (and even some manufacturers) adhere to the standard as well as they adhere to the standards defining Ton, Tonne, Metric ton, long ton, short ton, Imperial ton, and sometimes even the Tun. i.e. not at all. it's a wild grab-bag, where the originator intends one thing, says another, marketing picks the most favorable one, and the consumer gets to guess just what in the heck the device can actually do. | |
| Jun 4, 2021 at 21:42 | comment | added | supercat | @IvoBeckers: What term should one use for multiples of 1,024,000 bytes, as would have been used to describe floppy disk capacities (e.g. how should one describe the capacity of a disk that holds 2400 sectors of 512 bytes each)? | |
| May 8, 2020 at 1:48 | answer | added | Flydog57 | timeline score: 0 | |
| May 6, 2020 at 22:14 | comment | added | Solar Mike | Ahh, much easier to specify disk access rates in furlongs per fortnight... | |
| May 6, 2020 at 9:22 | answer | added | JeremyP | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 2, 2020 at 16:01 | answer | added | Peter Ridgers | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 2, 2020 at 14:12 | comment | added | Ivo | In my experience to this day there is still wrong usage of Mb or MB in today's commercials. But it does seem more consistent now. There was a time you really had to guess if they meant bit or byte. | |
| May 2, 2020 at 11:13 | comment | added | Margaret Bloom | How are you surprised by this if, quoting, you said: "Yes, I also know about the "MiB" stuff, but it never seemed to be used by anyone."? That's the same thing: not concording on symbolism. | |
| May 2, 2020 at 10:55 | comment | added | matja | I never really noticed this before so I flicked through three copies of the UK "PC Plus" magazine from 1988 and 1990, adverts mostly used "Mb" (usually in reference to hard disks), and editorial usually used "MB" or "MByte", but several instances of adverts using "mb" and "MEG", too. | |
| May 2, 2020 at 8:25 | comment | added | JdeBP | For the record, that is not the standard. Markus Kuhn and Aubrey Jaffer both recommeded "bit" not be abbreviated, Kuhn stating that it is itself already a contraction, and noted the problem of "B" meaning bel. This is what ISO/IEC 80000 and IEEE 1541 standardize. Abbreviations only really got standardized, in a standard, in the 21st century, and the actual formal standards do not in fact agree with the informal widely-propounded rule (e.g. Brett Glass in InfoWorld magazine in 1991) from the late 20th entury. | |
| May 1, 2020 at 22:10 | history | became hot network question | |||
| May 1, 2020 at 21:59 | comment | added | dave | It's worse when they write 'mb' - I mean, who measures storage in millibits? (Hmm, maybe I should recommend that unit to disk vendors) | |
| May 1, 2020 at 19:05 | comment | added | cup | Early adverts didn't differentiate between k=1000 and K=1024 either. You could find all the variations of ks and bs in the early mags. | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:44 | answer | added | Raffzahn | timeline score: 8 | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:39 | answer | added | hobbs | timeline score: 37 | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:29 | comment | added | Alan B | @Tommy Definitely Amiga\ST\Archimedes etc users talked in MB meaning megabytes. | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:27 | comment | added | Tommy | Given that consoles weren't such a big deal in Europe prior to the Gameboy and Mega Drive — the Master System was a decent seller but those two were the watershed — perhaps it's just that there wasn't any real ambiguity? The pump-up-the-numbers labelling of 'megabits' wasn't really used by anyone in the 1980s home computer world. | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:24 | comment | added | Alan B | They possibly did mean 'megabit', especially when it came to 16-bit consoles where cart size was very often discussed that way, probably stemming from the marketing departments being economical with the truth and users not knowing the difference. There was a thing at the time where PC owners would point out that no, your N64 game isn't actually on a 512MB cartridge, console peasant :) | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:22 | comment | added | fadden | Most likely the authors in question didn't know any better. Is your question about writing in computer magazines, or "when did MB/Mb become the convention for megabytes vs. megabits"? | |
| May 1, 2020 at 15:21 | comment | added | Jon Custer | 64 Megabits is 8 Megabytes. | |
| May 1, 2020 at 14:21 | answer | added | Vatine | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 1, 2020 at 14:17 | review | First posts | |||
| May 1, 2020 at 16:43 | |||||
| May 1, 2020 at 14:10 | history | asked | Presiliano | CC BY-SA 4.0 |