Omnimaga

Calculator Community => TI Calculators => General Calculator Help => Topic started by: asi14 on March 11, 2014, 11:35:38 pm

Title: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: asi14 on March 11, 2014, 11:35:38 pm
What can be improved? Color is no longer an issue, but lag is now an issue, so that can be an issue.
Additionally, the OS could be improved upon to emulate a computer more, similar to DoorsCS in some sort.
I dont think there will be any more updates to the TI OS system for the TI 84 D:
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: Aspiring on March 12, 2014, 03:52:18 pm
#StartRant
The ti-83 plus / ti-84 plus se is petty old (in comparison to nspire and smartphones etc.) It is actually somewhat surprizing just how long it has lasted.  (  The main reason the calculator is still in use is because teachers, friends, relatives, etc.  all know how to use the interface.  Thus, why migrate to a new one like nsipre?  Schools which have invested heavily into the ti-83 plus series will be much more hesitant.  While the nspire's menu system is far more user friendly, the nspire (or any other calc) can hardly complete with the support for the ti-83 series.  You can find a tutorial for probably every feature of the ti-83 series but the same is not for other calcs.  If TI changed the ti-83 series sigificantly many tutorials would become useless thus making ease of use worse.  In other words any update will probably add more functions (not anything like a CAS) and fix bugs.
#EndRant

But of course this is still a great calculator and I like it a lot (it has taught me a lot about programing and pointers with axe parser.  :thumbsup: )
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: Sorunome on March 12, 2014, 04:01:11 pm
I doubt they will be doing any OS updates anymore, as they prolly thing 2.55MP is stable enough :P
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2014, 11:09:35 pm
There are also a lot of students who still buy the 83+/84+ mainly because of the lower price+amount of games combo. You still see some young teens in hi school being astonished when they see older students/friends/brothers playing games on a calculator, even if it's a monochrome one.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 12, 2014, 11:45:46 pm
I'd like for TI to scrap the idea of MP, and allow reading variables from the archive. And, for Astley's sake, a string() command! Is it that hard to include one?
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2014, 11:49:37 pm
What would string do that Sub(), Instring() and Str1 to Str0 cannot?
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 12, 2014, 11:50:30 pm
What would string do that Sub(), Instring() and Str1 to Str0 cannot?
Do it faster and with no auxiliary variables.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2014, 11:51:57 pm
I wonder how the syntax would look like?
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 12, 2014, 11:52:29 pm
I wonder how the syntax would look like?
string(A
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2014, 11:53:44 pm
And what would it display? I am kinda curious how this syntax and regular str/sub/instring syntax would compare. I never used a string() command before on any calc.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 12, 2014, 11:54:39 pm
And what would it display? I am kinda curious how this syntax and regular str/sub/instring syntax would compare. I never used a string() command before on any calc.
The same way it works on the TI-89. It returns the value of A in a string. In otherwords, A=expr(string(A.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2014, 11:55:22 pm
Oh ok you mean it's like a var->str command?
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 12, 2014, 11:56:44 pm
Oh ok you mean it's like a var->str command?
It can take any value.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2014, 11:57:50 pm
Sorry, I give up. I just don't understand. I sadly never used anything other than TI-83+ BASIC and am still very new to HP Prime PPL so I would probably need to learn TI-89 BASIC in order to understand, especially that I only learn with concrete examples.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 13, 2014, 12:00:49 am
Sorry, I give up. I just don't understand. I sadly never used anything other than TI-83+ BASIC and am still very new to HP Prime PPL so I would probably need to learn TI-89 BASIC in order to understand, especially that I only learn with concrete examples.
Also, u=expr(string(u, provided u exists. Just as you aren't limited to passing variables to expr(, neither are you to string(.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: bb010g on March 15, 2014, 03:15:41 pm
string and expr are awesome. expr's basically eval in other languages. For example: string(42)="42"; string({1,2,3})="{1,2,3}"; expr("42")=42; expr("{1,2,3}")={1,2,3}; expr("Q") (with Q being previously set)=<value of Q>; etc.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: TheCoder1998 on March 15, 2014, 03:25:54 pm
i always thought a numtostring command should've been implemented in the os but it's not (yay symbolic :D)
why isn't it exactly?
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: blue_bear_94 on March 15, 2014, 11:02:18 pm
i always thought a numtostring command should've been implemented in the os but it's not (yay symbolic :D)
why isn't it exactly?
I don't know, ask TI.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 16, 2014, 12:23:05 am
Considering how much effort they put into fixing the bugs reported last year and many other times via TI-Cares, good luck :P
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: willrandship on March 16, 2014, 12:37:07 am
Yeah, TI really doesn't care about the programmer niche at all. Their biggest priority is keeping schools and testing agencies like the ACT and SAT happy. Can't say I blame them, but I can say I think they're going about it the wrong way. Why not make a verification tool that can show if an OS has been modified, for example, rather than simply locking down the OS installations and enforcing that lockdown with legal threats?
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: TheCoder1998 on March 16, 2014, 06:34:00 am
Why not make a verification tool that can show if an OS has been modified, for example, rather than simply locking down the OS installations and enforcing that lockdown with legal threats?

this is exactly what i thought
c'mon TI!
show us some love :mad:
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 16, 2014, 11:49:34 am
Yeah, TI really doesn't care about the programmer niche at all. Their biggest priority is keeping schools and testing agencies like the ACT and SAT happy. Can't say I blame them, but I can say I think they're going about it the wrong way. Why not make a verification tool that can show if an OS has been modified, for example, rather than simply locking down the OS installations and enforcing that lockdown with legal threats?
they did legal threats? O.O
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: willrandship on March 20, 2014, 11:56:25 am
Would you call a Cease and Desist letter anything else? They actually went to court over the signing keys, but thankfully the EFF offered to take the case, for free.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 20, 2014, 01:42:56 pm
Oh right, I forgot about the RSA keys DMCA takedown notices (TI lost, thankfully). I thought that someone got a C&D for installing a third party OS on his calc or something.

I know around 2002 TI sent a C&D to someone who was developing a third-party OS, though.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: Sorunome on March 20, 2014, 04:29:25 pm
TI should be happy IMO to have such a motivated community, but all they care about are stupid exams ._.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: willrandship on March 20, 2014, 06:21:10 pm
IMO the only thing that really needs improving for TI calcs is TI's attitude toward programming.

Oh, and also the price. $100 is too much for a z80-based system that doesn't even give you all the RAM you could have.
Title: Re: What do you think can be improved on with the TI 84
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 20, 2014, 08:11:36 pm
Well, at least, for the 84+CSE, they let it open to ASM programming. The new OS has extra protection for testguard, but it still has Asm/Flash apps support. It's just the Nspire that is the issue. It's like if they wanted their calcs to be locked down at all cost, but threw a bone at the community (called the TI-84+CSE) as an overpriced compromise.

Their greedyness doesn't help either. If they ever switch to an Ez80 for the CSE, even if it runs at 25 MHz they'll use that as an excuse to jack up the price by $30.