Apple…you suck.

Fellow 'Computer Guys' out there will know that when you buy a new hard drive or other mass storage device, you're going to get a little less space than you expect.

This is mostly down to the fact that we say a megabyte is 1000 bytes for convenience when it's really 1024. In the early days, when storage devices were relatively small, that extra 24 bytes per megabyte didn't mean much. (It meant a 500 megabyte hard drive really only held 489 megabytes, hardly noticeable)…but as hard drives got bigger, it started making a hell of a difference. This didn't stop manufacturers from still 'rounding up' on the packaging though.

So, I was expecting my 8gig iPod touch to be a little less (about 250 megabytes less), but I was surprised when I discovered my '8gig' iPod was actually a 7.1 gig iPod.

I was missing almost three quarters of a gigabyte.

Later I worked out that not only were Apple rounding up, but that they didn't count the space taken up by the iPod's OS.

Sorry, but when I buy something that says it can store 8 gigabytes of music, I expect around eight…not seven.

Well, today iTunes informed me that there was a new version of iTunes and new iPod software available.

Regular readers will know that less than a month ago, my iPod bricked when I tried to restore it from my Netbook. Installing the new OS meant doing basically the same thing again…so I wasn't looking forward to it, even though I'd be doing it from my Desktop, which has never had any problems. I figured I had to update sooner or later, so I might as well do it sooner while the iPod was still under warranty.

Well, I didn't brick the iPod, but it didn't restore properly either…meaning I had to reinstall all my apps and music manually. This may not seem like a big deal, but that's months of save games and data lost in the blink of an eye. When you've spent weeks unlocking challenges and getting your score nice and high in 'Brain Challenge', starting from scratch is a bit of a pisser.

However, the real kick in the teeth was when I looked at the available space in iTunes.

Apparently, the new OS is a real space hog, because my 8gig iPod that was really a 7.1gig iPod is now officially a 6.8 gig iPod. That's space for 75 songs up in smoke for the ability to put apps in folders and an 'airplane' button in the settings menu. Oh, and some of my apps that previously worked fine now chug like hell.