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by anon4 3916 days ago
Maybe TI should upgrade the processor in it a bit? Put a better screen? Maybe one based on e-ink? Imagine a LISP machine with dedicated calculator buttons, the size of a small kindle.

An iPad with an app is not the solution, but how come graphing calculators haven't advanced at all.
2 comments
electroly 3916 days ago
Go to TI's website right now and look at their graphing calculators section. Seriously, this isn't a thought experiment. Go check it out:

https://education.ti.com/en/us/products#!product=graphing-ca...

They DO have vastly improved and modernized calculators. The Nspire line has fast processors, lots of storage, bright color screens, touch capability, greatly improved software, etc. They don't really even cost more than the "old school" TI graphing calculators. TI can really only be blamed for not dropping the price on their old models. It would be misleading to suggest that TI hasn't worked on more advanced calculators.

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greydius 3916 days ago
Aside from the color screen and faster processor, these new Nspire calculators have no new features except gimmicky stuff (No one is going to buy a calculator because they need a 2"x2" spreadsheet). Even my TI-89, which I bought in 1999, has the same basic functionality. (Maybe that's why the TI-89's price hasn't changed -- it costs as much as the Nspire CAS). The only truly useful improvement TI has made is a rechargeable battery pack.
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jcrawfordor 3916 days ago
The NSpire OS is significantly more usable than the 83+ and 89 that I went through school with. In one case, I was able to put a dataset acquired from measurements into the spreadsheet editor, run a linear regression, get the r^2 for the regression, then draw the graph of points and line and save it in just a few seconds of menu choices - without ever having done that on an NSpire before. This would have taken me significantly longer on the older models if I hadn't already memorized the procedure.

So I wouldn't say that the NSpire has any radically new features, but I think that it's a lot more approachable then the older models. It feels less like something that you have to specifically learn to use and more like an intuitive software package - which is perhaps what our author is really getting at when they talk about apps.

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dspillett 3916 days ago
> but how come graphing calculators haven't advanced at all.

They don't really need to so there is little commercial reason to develop better models. The old TI-81/TI-83 designs are still perfectly sufficient for the courses to a certainly level, and above that you need something much more than just a bit improved so you can run chunky software like matlab. There isn't really much of an exploitable niche in between.

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