I was there too. What you call being "widely reviled" is just another way of saying "in common usage". Maybe you "reviled" it, but it was just convention. So it's not false, and it wasn't well delineated. Just like it continues not to be.

Why don't you take a look at Wikipedia which clearly describes the many, many, many places in which powers-of-10 is used, and then also has a section on powers-of-2:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_...

Remember, it wasn't just hard drives either. It's been data transfer speeds, network speeds, tape capacities, etc. There's an awful lot of stuff in computing that doesn't inherently depend on powers of 2 for its scaling.

And so as long as we have both units and will always have both units, it makes sense to give them different names. And, obviously, the one that matches the SI system should have the same name as it. Can you seriously disagree? Again, I don't care what you say in conversation. But in labels and specifications, how can you argue against it?