
The unstoppable TI-84 Plus: An outdated calculator still holds a monopoly - gatsby
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/09/02/the-unstoppable-ti-84-plus-how-an-outdated-calculator-still-holds-a-monopoly-on-classrooms/?tid=sm_fb
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vlunkr
"We have to keep evolving on this platform, but it can’t be innovation for the
sake of innovation,” said Peter Balyta, president of Texas Instruments’
calculator division. “While it’s tempting for us to build in WiFi, Bluetooth,
audio, a camera, a whole bunch of things, we could do, but teachers don’t want
us to. And it’s because we want to have a tool that kids can use in a
classroom, on their way home, at home when they’re doing homework and also a
tool they can bring in during their most important exam.”

What a bunch of crap. They could make it more powerful, less bulky, add
rechargeable batteries, or drop the price. No one is asking for a camera or
audio.

~~~
burgers
_> and also a tool they can bring in during their most important exam._

This is the most important part. Cheating is probably the primary reason these
are used and not computers/smartphones etc. That is their niche. Test taking.
With that, if you change the form factor etc, it becomes more difficult for
test administers to recognize etc, and more power allows for programs that can
be more "creative" and how they find answers to problems.

The tool is a perfect reflection of being built for a very particular market.

~~~
moizk
I use to write programs in HS for these things that helped me during math
tests.

~~~
biggc
Chances are, if you were able to program the algorithms required to solve the
problems, you understood them well enough or more than enough to pass the
course.

~~~
syncsynchalt
Yes but you can copy a program more easily than you can "copy" the knowledge
behind it.

What happens when one kid writes a quadratic solver and gives it to half the
class?

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blackaspen
I still use my TI-83+ pretty often.

All the years of using it with physics homework and statistics homework and
whatnot has wired its usage into my brain.

Sure, I could use R or Python, but when all I need to do is some simple math
the calculator is always faster. It has tactile buttons I can operate with one
hand, a clear readable screen, and a battery that lasts long. And it's simple.

If mine broke I'd buy another one.

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w1ntermute
This is a repost (from 18 hours ago):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260038)

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batbomb
One thing that was the "killer app" for graphing calculators, at least through
college in the last decade (even with wifi), was the fact that there were
apps.

Graphing calculators were the first mass market mobile computers under $200
with what you could almost refer to as an app store, via ticalc.org (oh how
many hours I spent on there). The interfaces had to be easy to use with low
resolution screens and usually four directional buttons. Apps had to be about
content. Games were pretty fun.

My TI-89 has survived 11 years. It's survived bike falls, being thrown across
the room several times (when I was too quick to grab it and it went flying out
of the cover). I use it infrequently but the batteries haven't been changed in
over a year. I still have more screen real estate when I am typing on it than
I do with my iPhone 5 (both in vertical and landscape). It has actual buttons
and I have muscle memory so I don't even have to look at it when I type in
numbers and symbols.

I have a periodic table app on my TI-89 that has been on there since 2003. The
information someone in chemistry or physics needs is quicker to access than
[http://www.ptable.com](http://www.ptable.com) or wikipedia. I'm sure there
are apps on an iPod that are probably better now, but an iPod's batteries
don't last months.

What could usurp it? Something in the same form factor that can last 48+ hours
and take AA or AAA batteries. Something that provides temporary instructor
override, allowing an instructor to enforce a policy temporarily (i.e. disable
the CAS). Something that might integrate well with tools from TI that are out
there. Something that's useful from middle school up to
engineering/chemistry/physics.

Maybe something e-ink (and/or e-ink buttons), plastic, ARM or Atmel, Linux,
python and some sort of CAS (Mathematica/Maple branded) by default, with an
App store/ecosystem. Something $50-$75. WiFi only, but off by default.
Something that probably looks a bit like a nokia n800 or blackberry. I think
that would be reasonable.

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kitsune_
In high school I programmed a mini-RPG on a TI-85. It actually was quite a lot
of fun (the programming, not so much the game). In our last year I think we
could also buy either a TI-89 or TI-92 (which was quite the behemoth). In our
school the math teachers were free to choose between TI and HP calculators, so
we had some other classes / groups that had to calculate with reverse polish
notation. At that time I laughed at this idea, thinking why would anyone
choose this over infix notation. Then years later, after learning LISP and
prefix notation, I laughed at my dumb younger self.

Incredible that TI still reigns supreme.

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ChuckMcM
I've got a TI 92+ which was, in my mind, the pinnacle of the calculator era.
As I recall the 83 was Z80 based and the 92 was 68000 based, but what really
made the 92 something I needed to keep was that it did pretty much everything
Mathematica could do on a Sun-2 Workstation back in the day.

As far as disrupting goes, I use TyDig on my iPad as my most often used
"calculator" these days. The 92 doesn't come out much. But for the market
(high school) it is hard to beat the combination of features and cost that a
calculator brings to the table.

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roywiggins
There are worse monopolies, I guess. The 83+/84+ has good software and is
neigh indestructible. The physical interface is very good and beats a touch
screen.

A TI calculator fast enough to run NumPy to build simulations and interactive
gizmos would be super cool though. Allowing students to build colorful
mathematical animations and physics simulations using simple building blocks
would be awesome. Of course that can all be done with laptops but having
things in the palm of your hand shouldn't be underestimated.

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phireph0x
I've owned 4 (!) different TI graphing calculators throughout the years. I
believe it started with the TI-85 in the mid-90s, followed by the 86, then the
92, and finally culminating with the TI-89 in 1999. I don't think they've
really surpassed the 89 in terms of functionality. I ended up selling the 92,
as it was replaced with the functionally-equivalent 89 (in the familiar TI
form-factor), and gave the 85 to my sister, so today all that remains is the
89 and the 86. I have fond memories of playing games and writing small
programs on TI graphing calcs (ticalc.org still exists, apparently). At first
only BASIC programs were supported, but then some folks figured out how to
hack the 85 to run assembly, which continued on the other models. TI fought it
at first, but later reluctantly supported assembly programs. Some enterprising
hackers managed to implement rudimentary audio support via the data port,
which I thought was quite impressive. The 84 Plus is essentially the old TI-82
platform iterated a number of times (TI-82, TI-83, 83 Plus, 83 Plus Silver,
etc.)

I've been waiting for years for TI to make a graphing calc smartphone app, but
with margins such as those described in the article, why would they? It'll
likely take a major shift in the testing standards (i.e. allowing mobile
devices) for this situation to change. Test proctors might have to become more
vigilant, but I imagine if airplane mode was strictly enforced, then
smartphones might be allowed. Seems that the communications features (which
can facilitate cheating) are the primary concern.

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Ethan_Mick
Relevant XCKD: [http://xkcd.com/768/](http://xkcd.com/768/)

If TI is such an incumbent, why haven't they been disrupted? Could someone
come in and make a better calculator for a cheaper price (like Casio, in the
article. Not sure if it's a better calculator though)?

The other problem is, even if they did, no one would buy it because it
wouldn't be available for the SAT/ACT.

Edit: Casio in the article competes on price.

~~~
smeyer
I don't think the problem is the SAT/ACT. That's a problem with cellphones,
but lots of calculators are allowed on those tests, including the Casios[1].
The bigger challenge seems to be that teachers default to assigning TIs to
their students.

[1] [http://sat.collegeboard.org/register/calculator-
policy](http://sat.collegeboard.org/register/calculator-policy) Five different
brands have at least 3 approved graphing calculators for the SATs.

~~~
cdwhite
This is it. In high school statistics, I tried to use my dad's HP-48g, which I
dearly loved (in large part thanks to RPL---this was fairly soon after I
discovered Scheme and dc). This didn't really work: the teacher would explain
how to do something (automated statistical tests, for example) on a TI-89, and
I'd have to spend a whole bunch of time trying to figure out the equivalent.

This was a pain, and it was compounded by the fact that the HP-48 didn't have
the same features as the TI-89, so I was frequently out of luck. The teacher
wrote his homeworks and tests with an eye towards what was doable without too
much effort on a TI-89, and I imagine that the TI people chose the featureset
for the 89 with an eye towards what people would want to do in high school
classes, so using anything else was an uphill battle.

(We also had occasional homeworks in Excel, and I ran into the same trouble
trying to do them in Perl. It didn't help that I was _very far_ from an expert
in either Perl or the HP-48g.)

~~~
gknoy
As a counterpoint, my HS classes used TI-81s, and I had bought a TI-85. Not
all the things were in the same place, and so I often had to think of other
ways of getting to the same place. At the time I thought it was a good thing,
but I'm not sure if it was just that I was geeking out on the nicer hardware.
;)

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RIMR
From the article:

"Apple sells an iPod touch for $199 that comes with 16 gigabytes of memory"

I tend to let it slide when people get memory and storage confused, but I hold
journalists to a higher standard. This isn't even a semantic error; this came
right after describing the RAM capacity of a TI-84 Plus C Silver. Nothing Matt
McFarland wrote in this article was _wrong_ , but it certainly wasn't highly-
informed either...

Comparing TI calculators to consumer electronics is a rather moot point. It's
better to compare against the plummeting costs of microcomputers in general.
The Raspberry Pi is better proof that TI is marking their products up 1000%+!
Nobody needs a calculator with a 1GHz processor and 512GB of RAM, and 8-128GB
of flash storage, so why are we paying for even more than what that would
cost?

~~~
zanny
> so why are we paying for even more than what that would cost?

Because TI has tried in the past to introduce more powerful calculators, and
that fell flat.

The 84 exists because schools expect it. That is all. Until they accept your
smartphone as a calculator, TI can markup the 84 as much as they want and
everyone _has_ to buy it because there is no free market in school
calculators.

------
gohrt
Oh the one hand, TI calcs were a wonderful tool and toy for the yound math
needs -- i lusted for the 81 and 85. Maybe the 84+ is perfect for its job. On
the other hand, it must have less than $15 wholesale unit cost now, and has no
right to enforce a proprietary OS/software lockdown.

~~~
Alupis
well, since you can sideload apps onto the tiny rom... and there are romdumps
available online as well as the official ROM from TI's website... presumably
one could make their own ROM or tweak it... but... I don't see much of a
market for that as it's main purpose is to calculate...

------
beering
I have fond memories of the TI-89 - all the power of a TI-92, but the same
form factor as the TI-83/84, so it wouldn't raise much attention.

Having a computer algebra system in my handheld calculator got me all the way
from pre-algebra to intro diff eq in high school. It's hard to say whether it
was unfair, but being able to try algebra and calculus things out on the CAS
really helped me explore and understand concepts.

------
davidw
Speaking of calculators, I have one of those HP stack-based (48 ?) things from
20+ years ago sitting around. Is there a market for those at all?

~~~
jdpage
I have the HP-50g. Love that thing, though I don't get to use it much these
days. I bought it for taking the tests in my intro physics course at uni,
after my TI-89 got stolen by some doucherocket. My physics professor was a
huge fan of the HP RPN calculators, and recommended them highly.

I was also notorious for bringing a slide rule into tests in case the
batteries ran out on the calculator.

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eloisant
So in US teachers get to decide the calculator to use? That's crazy.

When I was in junior high (in France) it was about 50/50 between TI and Casio.
In high school a few kids had an HP48. The rare time there was something
specific to do with the calculator (eg. calculating sequences) the teacher
would ask one geek from each camp to explain to the class how to do it with
calculators of that brand.

~~~
VLM
Yes, its seen as vocational training. Rather than teaching trig or how to
apply it or what it means, you get how to display sine waves on a specific TI
model.

I'm old enough that my vocational training in high school math classes was on
the venerable yet new at that time TI-81. That vocational training was not
terribly useful in university classes, the rot had not reached that high (at
that time)

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oneweirdtrick
Here's a link for anyone who wants a TI simulation on their phones:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Revsoft.Wa...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Revsoft.Wabbitemu&hl=en)

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macspoofing
>"While it’s tempting for us to build in WiFi, Bluetooth, audio, a camera ...
"

How about a bigger screen, more memory and a faster chip? I get that there
still exists a calculator niche, but come on, it doesn't mean you just don't
even try!

------
iamthepieman
The TI-83 is more in the textbook market than the electronics or calculator
market. Once you realize this, the price doesn't seem so surprising. At least,
it doesn't seem any more surprising than textbook prices.

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Alupis
I still have mine from high school statistics class. The best part was being
able to side-load apps and play that spaceship game (phoenix something?) in
class while looking like you were mad calculating some P Value.

~~~
existencebox
So much nostalgia around that game. If you didn't get the ultimate weapon by
the time the fast moving circles came around you're basically screwed, and
would need to restart. (since money drop was RNG).

I think that was actually the game that got me into programming, to figure out
"how did they even do that." (and taught myself in isolation such terrible
things as not understanding what a for loop was actually used for, and using
it as a time delay loop.)

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ekianjo
You'd be better with an Open Pandora running R to do any kind of Science work
at school in a portable format. These calculators are completely ancient.

~~~
JosephRedfern
Things like Battery Life, use during exams and the keyboard/button layout
might be an issue, though. That and the fact that most high-school classes
probably use TI calculators rather than R.

~~~
ekianjo
I have a Pandora and I only need to charge it one a week or something, the
battery lasts very long (even though I used it a couple of hours a day). So in
the school context it would do just fine.

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mattfrommars
I'm suprised how expensive Ti-89 Titanium was when I bought it compared to
phones. Fucking TI.

