TI: A step back towards the TI community?

[mlytle0]

@aetios

My impression is that TI is trying to lock in a market by trying to get education departments to see the Nspire as a necessary part of the Education infrastructure.  As necessary as the textbooks.  This is why they want kids to do their homework on the Nspire and then upload the problem sets to their teacher.  Sort of like 'Electronic paper'.  It's very ambitious, but I don't think the world of the near future will see this as essential when maybe 30% or more of the college seats in the U.S. go away, when recession battered single parent or two parent families are wondering where they can find $150 for a calculator only useful for a few classes.  I don't think people will do their English assignments on it.

[jwalker]

Yes, but that is why they are locking it down in the first place. PTTKiller dosnt have much of an effect on TI except in the class room, but OSlauncher could causes TI to loose money. Corporations will try to protect their profits.

Think of it this way, Every calc that uses OSLauncher to start a CAS OS instead of the regular OS, TI has just lost $20. Every Student that finds out that OSLauncher exists because they visit sites that have it because they are looking for games could now download it. That is hundreds of poeple.

[aeTIos]

Are they aiming to let teachers use it in english class? Thats ridiculous O.o
Their aim at letting people use the calculator as a datalogger seems legit, tho (And will be much more used)

edit: also can you drop a cas OS on the nspire with oslauncher? Cool

[Lionel Debroux]

Yeah. TI could make their calculators more useful to the education infrastructure if the platform was more open.

[aeTIos]

Yep, think of it like people using the calculator as a part in circuits (like as a display, or the other way round, create new input things for it). This has be done on the 84+ (usb8x, ti-nterface[by keoni29]) and I am sure the nspire can be used even better if the lockage gets removed.

[mlytle0]

One other thing, is, I think the arrival of low power CPU's that can address megabytes of memory with speed, like the ARM family, just begs for some marketing clown to "fill it" with something and ruin everything.  The bloated and buggy OS on the Nspire was probably predictable, as this level of hardware became available.  You could never screw up this bad with a Motorola 68000, as it could never support such a monstrocity.

I see the Nspire OS as the Windows Vista of calculators...

[Lionel Debroux]

Yes, but that is why they are locking it down in the first place. PTTKiller dosnt have much of an effect on TI except in the class room, but OSlauncher could causes TI to loose money. Corporations will try to protect their profits.

Think of it this way, Every calc that uses OSLauncher to start a CAS OS instead of the regular OS, TI has just lost $20. Every Student that finds out that OSLauncher exists because they visit sites that have it because they are looking for games could now download it. That is hundreds of people.

As I've explained multiple times:
* Clickpad / Touchpad CAS calculators are simpler (no interchangeable keyboard) than Clickpad / Touchpad non-CAS calculators, and therefore, the manufacturing cost is lower;
* CX CAS and CX non-CAS calculators are the exact same hardware: it's just one bit of difference in one of the hardware ports (the one used for the serial ID). One has a "CAS" mention while the other one doesn't, but this is a vanishingly small part of the manufacturing cost;
* the development of the sub-par 84+ emulator cost some money, but it has disappeared from CX; in theory, the stripping down of the CAS OS (an OS which needs to be done anyway) to make the non-CAS OS costs some money, but it's the flip of a switch...

Does TI lose money when a non-CAS calculator is used for CAS ? No. What costs them money is the fact that they have to make a non-CAS version in the first place, in order to comply with brain-damaged "standardized tests" crap regulated by incompetents.

And when someone pays a Nspire for $150 or €150, only a small proportion of that goes to the manufacturer. As you know, most of the price of an item is made by the various retailers' margins
That's why P2C direct distribution schemes let the manufacturer/producer earn comparatively more money, and therefore be able to make a better product (money makes everything easier...), which pleases consumers more than large retail distribution stores. I live in a rural area, I know how that works.

[jwalker]

They sell the CAS OS for more money than the non CAS OS, so they arent making as much of a profit AKA loosing money on their product. They may not be going in the red on a manufacturing standpoint because they are still make Nspires, but they do loose money.
Many stores have the CX CAS priced the same as on TI's website, maybe even less in some cases.

[Lionel Debroux]

They sell the CAS OS for more money than the non CAS OS

Er, they do not sell either the CAS OS or the non-CAS OS, as both can be downloaded from their web site for no fee

They might sell the CAS-capable hardware as "CAS" at a higher price tag than the CAS-capable hardware as "non-CAS".

[jwalker]

Yes, but they have the calculator purposely locked so that you can only use a CAS OS on their specified CAS calculators. If poeple want to use a calculator that has a CAS, Then TI wants them to buy the more expensive calculator. They didn't realy try to lock down the Z80 or the 68000 based calculators because the operating systems and hardware was not even compatible, you couldn't put the ti-89 OS(CAS) on a ti-84+ silver(non-CAS). TI-89's sold for way more money because they had a CAS OS. they probably only costed a little bit more to manufacture than the 84 too.
Another thing you must look at is features, the CAS OS has more features, which made it more expensive to produce because it probably took more man hours to make. You are paying for those man hours when you buy the CAS calculator for maybe $20 more.
What I ment was the sell the CAS OS CALCULATOR for more money than the non CAS OS CALCULATOR.

[Lionel Debroux]

Another thing you must look at is features, the CAS OS has more features, which made it more expensive to produce because it probably took more man hours to make.

You have things backwards, as I explained above (the OS whose development cost extra money is clearly the non-CAS OS), but I don't think we should keep arguing about it.

[jwalker]

The crappy emulator probably wasnt that hard to make, the CAS OS has WAY more features and functions and would cost more to make. Also since TI is slowly pushing for the CX and CX CAS, by phasing out the old Nspires,  to become the only new Nspire types avalible, there is no 84 emulator on the CX. It would have taken alot longer to make the CAS OS because of all of the extera functionality, way longer than to make an 84 emulator.
And I agree, we should stop arguing.

[calc84maniac]

I'm pretty sure I heard that TI ported the CAS from the same base as the 68k series.

[Lionel Debroux]

You read about it because it's a fact, indeed
TI's CAS is still very largely the same code base as 15 years ago, on the 92+ and 89. My "Native EStack programming PoC " ( http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/437/43727.html ) is a very straightforward port of my TI-68k/AMS program.

[chickendude]

The main thing keeping me from getting any of their newer calculators is the "lack" of native assembly support. To be honest, having a color screen to play with sounds like a lot of fun, but being locked out of assembly (and, by extension, C), just sucks.  I think that was always one of the biggest attractions of their calculators: browsing the massive amounts of programs available and then learning to program them and do things you thought you never'd be able to do. That and knowing that a large number of people would have immediate access to and actually use/enjoy your programs. I guess for ARM programming there are a lot of other communities/platforms out there, i guess you'd just reach a different audience.

The 82-83+ (even the 89) will always be special to me, but not because of the math problems i solved on them Programming them was the reason i bought my first (and second, and third, and fourth, etc.) calculator