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I see what you mean, but what do you propose? The units already exist and they are the industry standard. Should new units of measure be made up just for consumers, or should all numbers but on consumer devices be locked to using only one of them? Who decides what's consumer packaging and what's not?
It's a sticky situation. I think while it may be confusing, the vast majority of people aren't paying much attention and it's probably not a big enough deal to do anything about it. The units are most often used correctly as in I can't imagine an ISP or a router advertising their speeds in Bytes, likewise I don't see any RAM or storage advertised in bits, so it's usually an apples to apples comparison anyway.
just to change the convention, and as a rule of thumb, not have units that are spelled the same. so maybe the most common expected one by the public should remind mbps, and the other one should be spelled out "mbytes/second" at least in public facing specs, if it is an academic or technical paper that is fine.
Same way we avoid homophonics in a sentence otherwise we end up with Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
I don't think you can say there is a "most common" unit for the general public. People probably shop for storage more than they do service providers, so I guess MB?
However I don't think spelling it makes it any easier. If people aren't noticing a capital B or a lowercase b, will they notice or understand bytes vs bits when spelled?
I think it's a case of it just kinda sucks we have similar sounding and spelled words, but the general public is not getting too caught up on it because they're largely oblivious. So long as manufacturers and sales use the appropriate term on the appropriate product, everything should work out. I've never seen a hard drive marketed in bit capacity, so I think this is really a non issue.
Just chalk it up to something you now understand better.