
The unstoppable TI-84 Plus: How an outdated calculator still holds a monopoly - jefflinwood
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/09/02/the-unstoppable-ti-84-plus-how-an-outdated-calculator-still-holds-a-monopoly-on-classrooms/?hpid=z13
======
Sir_Cmpwn
I'm the maintainer of KnightOS [1], an open source effort to build an
operating system that runs on the TI-84+ (and other TI calculators). I've been
tossing around the idea of also building open source calculator hardware for
far cheaper than TI calculators (which are way more expensive than
reasonable). In this dream I would also spend some time lobbying professors
and teachers to break the monopoly and educating them on why open source is
great. Is that something I should pursue? Would a kickstarter or something to
raise funds for hardware be a worthwhile effort?

[1] [http://knightos.org](http://knightos.org)

~~~
Steuard
It's really hard to get a teacher to change platforms (or textbooks or
whatever) when they've got years of expertise and teaching materials built up
on their current system. This isn't just laziness: you really are a less
effective teacher in classes where you're making a big change like this.
(You'd think "but calculators are all the same!" would make that moot, but the
trouble is that the _kids_ aren't experienced enough to get that yet, and as
an instructor you're suddenly rewriting every single worksheet and hint sheet
you have so the instructions match the new system.)

Mind you, I'd _love_ to see the TI monopoly get broken! But this is what
you're up against. And even if you have a great product and a teacher might be
willing to make the change, they'll be _really_ cautious about the risk that
your product won't survive and they'll need to switch back to something else
two years later.

~~~
fluidcruft
It's also an issue of which calculators are allowed to be used in standardized
testing environments. If you can't use the calculator on the AP exam, why did
you learn it's quirks?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Most exams don't specify a brand but rather more tangible requirements like
"must not have a QWERTY keyboard".

~~~
fluidcruft
Must not have IR/wireless communication capability is a big one.

------
allegory
It holds a monopoly because mathematics teachers teach things by rote and
procedure, not the underlying concepts from experience. Any deviation from the
non-TI norm is considered a teaching risk because the staff and students no
longer know which buttons to press and in what order.

Perhaps 5% of people may develop an understanding past that.

I myself, as a calculator and math geek, after using just about every damn
mid/high end calculator out there (TI82, TI83, TI89, TI nSpire CAS, HP48GX,
HP50g TI92, Casio 9750G, Casio Algebra Fx) ended up using a shit Casio through
school and my degree and Postgrad study. Conclusion:

Buy the best non-programmable Casio you can afford and leave it at that. My
most useful device was £15 (Casio 991 ES PLuS). Its an awesome device. That
and a mechanical pencil and some grey matter.

The TI dependency is a symptom of sickness in the system, nothing more.

Edit: found it. This is what I had:
[http://casio.ledudu.com/images/calculs/casio/machines/fx991V...](http://casio.ledudu.com/images/calculs/casio/machines/fx991V.jpg)

~~~
Zardoz84
Here in Spain, in the school and high-school is forbidden using programmable
calculators in exams. Even on doing the "selectividad", a pre university huge
exam, is forbiden these type of calculators. I'm very happy with my old
fx-85wa. It have all the advantages of a simple programmable calculator
(natural math expressions and edit the formula that you typed), but can't
store programs or functions, so isn't a programmable calculator. Plus works on
a small lithium battery + solar cell. I only need to change the battery one
time in this last 15 years.

~~~
kazinator
Hmm. There could be a market for a "disruptive tech" in this segment:
programmable calculators that look exactly like scientific non-programmable
calculators, and behave that way to someone who doesn't know some (user-
configurable) keystrokes to "unlock" the hidden power. When this is invoked,
it changes the meaning of certain buttons, like say stats functions or
whatever).

There could be some connector on the circuit board for easy programming via
your PC (say over USB). This would not be exposed unless the plastic is taken
off. With that, you could conveniently cram the calculator full of useful code
prior to an exam, then access it in the special mode.

Now imagine this was done as a mod kit for several popular mass-produced
calculators ...

------
jcurbo
I spent a _lot_ of my middle-school math classes programming on my TI-86. This
was in the mid-90's. My algebra books had a lot of BASIC programs that I
translated into TI-BASIC. I had no background in programming at the time, and
didn't even own my own PC for a few more years, but that early brush with
programming (plus using Apple II's at my elementary school) helped set me up
for doing computer science later.

~~~
silencio
2000s here, junior high to college on an 86 and then an 89 titanium - I
remember when the 84 came out! It wasn't much of an improvement on the 83. But
I learned a decent amount in my more basic math classes just by writing apps
for my calc when I wasn't writing games. My husband and I rediscover our old
calculators once in a while (83 silver, blasphemy!) and while they are pretty
outdated, they were well built for what they were meant for.

I assume one of the big reasons they're still around is because they're not as
useful as phones are, which is a big "benefit" for test taking and for
minimizing distractions.

~~~
allegory
They're more useful because they have buttons too. It's virtually impossible
to accurately enter numbers and expressions on a glass display with no tactile
feedback.

~~~
ghaff
It's not that bad; I mostly use an app to do quick calculations if I'm not at
a computer. But I agree that for any real number crunching, it's worth using a
physical calculator.

------
noonespecial
I think I had the Commodore Amiga of that era... The HP 48g. RPN ftw.

~~~
allegory
Apart from the fact that it was sloooow, impossible to repair as it was glued
together, the display was abysmal and you needed to drag the manuals around to
be productive.

Not a big fan of HP nostalgia to be honest, despite rather liking RPL.

~~~
noonespecial
I dunno about slow. Once I learned its quirks, I became one with the stack,
blasting in complex equations in RPN while my peers fiddled with brackets and
mode keys.

Plus I'll admit to feeling no small amount of nerdy badassery at typing in
what looked like alien gibberish to those around me while they slowly
WYSIWYGed their way to an answer.

~~~
wtallis
The UI is incredibly slow to draw. Many users may not have realized that
keystrokes were buffered (up to something like 32 key presses) so if you knew
your way around the menus and dialogs you could keep typing and the UI would
eventually catch up. Unlike when a desktop computer's GUI lags, the 48 series
would _always_ behave as though the GUI had drawn instantly, so you could
direct input to a dialog box or submenu that wasn't yet visible on screen.

------
gwintrob
My TI-83. First gaming system. First programming experience. Maybe first true
love?

~~~
soup10
+1 my first program was a hilariously poorly coded pong game on the ti-83. A
ridiculous mess of labels and goto's, but it worked! I may not have gotten
into programming if not for the early introduction through graphing
calculators.

------
rgrieselhuber
I've been surprised that there hasn't been a good, programmable calculator app
gain wide traction.

~~~
joezydeco
I left my HP42S in the drawer at home and now use the Free42 simulator on iOS.
It's insanely handy.

[http://thomasokken.com/free42/](http://thomasokken.com/free42/)

I know some here have mentioned the 48G, the 42S was always a bit more useful
and compact for my day-to-day use.

~~~
ghaff
I used an HP41C for many years (replacing an HP55). I found it had a better
key feel than later models. I bought an HP28S at some point but I never much
cared for it and, to tell the truth, didn't need a graphing calculator at that
point anyway.

I only used a TI for one year in college. This was during the period when
calculator prices were dropping very quickly and between entering college and
becoming a sophomore HP prices dropped to something relatively affordable and
I never looked back.

It doesn't have the key feel obviously but I use an HP41 emulator on my
iPhone.

~~~
CWuestefeld
As a denizen of HN, maybe you're the kind of person to have been exposed to
"synthetic programming" on the HP41?

~~~
ghaff
I think I actually bought a book on the topic at one point but never ended up
doing a lot with it. Unfortunately my HP41 is pretty much dead at this point
(battery leak and a flaky key) and it's one of those things I can't really
justify replacing. (And, like assembly language, I think I'll probably keep HP
calculator programming in the "it was cool at the time" bucket :-))

------
WoodenChair
This is a great example of a company building an ecosystem and catering over
decades to that ecosystem to build an appealing computing platform - not for
its technical merit, but rather for its community. It's analogous to the hold
of Apple IIs on education in the 1980s.

------
bane
Owned an 86 and a 92+. The 86 got me through all the courses that needed a
non-qwerty TI-83-like calculator, but it had more than enough memory for me to
type in all my formula, etc. for various classes. It was _just_ weird enough
that teachers didn't bother with it, but was close enough to a TI-83 that they
let it go.

I spent _hours_ programming it. I made an animation tool that would assemble a
sequence of pictures (painstakingly drawn dot by dot) into a flipbook-like
animation and a couple simple RPG games. It's a great first programming tool
since the language is pretty easy and you have to be aware of resource usage
since the memory is so tight.

My 92+ got me through my undergrad. Teachers didn't care since all of them
required us to show our work and didn't allow _any_ calculators on exams. But
it was a great study tool, especially in Calculus. The symbolic system is
fantastic and the pretty print algorithm they use is quite good.

Being a Motorola 68k-based calculator, it also ran some great games courtesy
ticalc.org. There used to be a fantastic version of SolarStriker for it that I
played relentlessly. It was a little like having an ultra portable Atari ST
that just happened to have a very good CAS built in.

There's some fantastic work being done there in Lua for the TI-nspire
calculator. like a SimCity 2k clone
[http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/460/46069.html](http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/460/46069.html)

------
brianbreslin
I can't even begin to calculate how many hours I wasted playing snake or drug
wars on my tI-84/TI-86 in high school in the 90s.

------
Chinjut
As I recall, even among TI graphing calculators, the TI-89 et al were vastly
better, with their functionality for symbolic computation. Of course,
nowadays, we all carry around vastly more powerful computers than any of these
in our pockets, yet still standards limp on inertly and TI gets to charge a
ridiculous amount for a suboptimal product.

~~~
maxerickson
The calculators with symbolic manipulation are often banned from standardized
tests.

(I don't intend that statement as an endorsement of either calculators or
standardized tests)

~~~
Chinjut
I, for one, endorse calculators wholeheartedly. I loved my TI-89, and I truly
believe the opportunity to play around with it played a large role in my
becoming a mathematician, of the sort which the "Calculators ruin math
education!" brigade never acknowledges.

------
yeukhon
TI-83 is really sufficient for most engineering classes I've taken (Computer
Engineering and EE courses) and many of my professors simply did not allow
calculators. They pick problems that can be solved by hands, maybe with a few
complex number tricks expecting students to know from doing homework or
something they'd been picking up from lower-division courses.

But TI-84 is, honestly, the only calculator one will ever need. It has the
extra functions that 83 doesn't provide and yet it's really enough do almost
any practical calculations one have to be done by hands. The rest are just
hypes.

The last reason is simply brand history. Once everyone owns 83 and 84 and
everyone has good review about them, they go for the good review.

------
arikrak
No person would ever willingly choose the TI calculator to learn or apply
math, but they need them for school. It's a similar issue for textbooks, where
the publishers can charge very high amounts, since the buyers (students) don't
have a choice.

Really everyone should be learning to use a tool like Mathematica, not a 1996
calculator, but the education system advances slowly...

(Also: [http://xkcd.com/768/](http://xkcd.com/768/) )

~~~
scottlocklin
I used Derive on an HP100LX. I still keep two HPX00LXes running in case I ever
need to do a bunch of symbolic math again. Best PDA/calculator ever for
physics.

Funny how old calculators never go away. The HP12C is still used everywhere in
finance and accounting.

------
krallja
What is preventing competitors from releasing a TI-84 Plus clone, where the
buttons are named and placed nearly identically, with a very similar OS?

~~~
loup-vaillant
Professors requiring a specific model, apparently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260282)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260310)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260165)

It wasn't the case for me, but still.

------
jsnk
I think people in finances know of even more extreme example of calculator
monopoly.

My dad still uses HP-12C, a financial calculator made by HP in the 80s
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-12C](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-12C)).
He's been using the same calculator for over 20 years. Extremely reliable and
practical. It's no wonder people still get them.

------
seanmccann
I went to high school in Canada where we had to take a standardized exam for
each course at the end of the semester. For our math course we were allowed to
use an "approved" graphing calculator. Our teachers told us not to buy
anything but the TI-83+, because they wanted to guarantee a "factory reset"
before exams. Anything else would waste too much time for them.

------
jules
Because schools require them. After that every sane person uses a computer
with Mathematica/Maple/Matlab/Octave/etc.

------
tzs
In some districts it is because they require students to purchase them even if
they are not used or are only used for simple arithmetic [1].

[1] [http://2020science.org/2010/07/11/texas-instruments-
graphing...](http://2020science.org/2010/07/11/texas-instruments-graphing-
calculators-essential-math-teaching-aid-or-a-scam/)

------
rdl
I never understood TI people; I used the HP 48GX from middle school through
high school; by college it was usually permissible to use Matlab.

TI seemed to have good cheap multipacks for grade schools, thus getting them
out there, but they were objectively inferior.

------
cja
Article says TI-84 released 2004. My TI-85 (on my desk right here) is from
1996. I bought it for my Maths and Further Maths A-level courses (England).
It's probably TI's fault that I'm a software developer now.

------
darklajid
These things always remind me of [1]. Why are these things still that popular
and quite expensive?

1: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2582](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2582)

------
Zardoz84
And why Casion not makes a clone of TI-84 ?? Same layout of keys, same
programming language. In any case. I never had a graphing calculator. I was
happy with the typical cheap Casio calculator. The last calculator that I
bought, when I was on school, is an old fx-85WA and it keeps working
perfectly. For doing some quick calcs works perfectly, and if I need something
more powerful, I simple open a python console or gnuplot on my computer.

I never saw that a teacher enforce us to use a particular kind of calculator,
except the prohibition of using a programmable calculator for exams.

~~~
rgawdzik
It's against the law?

~~~
loup-vaillant
Maybe. Some parts of the design may be copyrighted. I think the programming
language cannot be, and patents, if any, have probably expired by now.

The problem then is, once you have the clone, you need to get the professors
to know about it, and not requiring any specific calculator.

In any case, I'm not sure it would change much in practice. When I was at
school, teachers didn't require any particular calculator. Half my class chose
Casio, the other Ti. Two competitors are apparently not enough to drive prices
down.

~~~
astrodust
Copyright takes a lot longer to expire than a patent.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Copyright _never_ expires: it gets extended faster than time itself.

------
seanieb
I've always wondered what the cost of manufacturing would be for the the TI-84
would be today? Is there a BOM or estimates out there?

