The unstoppable TI-84 Plus: How an outdated calculator still holds a monopoly

I&#x27;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&#x27;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?<p>[1] <a href="http://knightos.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;knightos.org</a>

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.<p>Perhaps 5% of people may develop an understanding past that.<p>I myself, as a calculator and math geek, after using just about every damn mid&#x2F;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:<p>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.<p>The TI dependency is a symptom of sickness in the system, nothing more.<p>Edit: found it. This is what I had: <a href="http://casio.ledudu.com/images/calculs/casio/machines/fx991V.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;casio.ledudu.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;calculs&#x2F;casio&#x2F;machines&#x2F;fx991V...</a>

I spent a <i>lot</i> of my middle-school math classes programming on my TI-86. This was in the mid-90&#x27;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&#x27;t even own my own PC for a few more years, but that early brush with programming (plus using Apple II&#x27;s at my elementary school) helped set me up for doing computer science later.

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

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

I&#x27;ve been surprised that there hasn&#x27;t been a good, programmable calculator app gain wide traction.

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&#x27;s analogous to the hold of Apple IIs on education in the 1980s.

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 <i>just</i> weird enough that teachers didn&#x27;t bother with it, but was close enough to a TI-83 that they let it go.<p>I spent <i>hours</i> 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&#x27;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.<p>My 92+ got me through my undergrad. Teachers didn&#x27;t care since all of them required us to show our work and didn&#x27;t allow <i>any</i> 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.<p>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.<p>There&#x27;s some fantastic work being done there in Lua for the TI-nspire calculator. like a SimCity 2k clone <a href="http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/460/46069.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ticalc.org&#x2F;archives&#x2F;files&#x2F;fileinfo&#x2F;460&#x2F;46069.html</a>

I can&#x27;t even begin to calculate how many hours I wasted playing snake or drug wars on my tI-84&#x2F;TI-86 in high school in the 90s.

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.

TI-83 is really sufficient for most engineering classes I&#x27;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&#x27;d been picking up from lower-division courses.<p>But TI-84 is, honestly, the only calculator one will ever need. It has the extra functions that 83 doesn&#x27;t provide and yet it&#x27;s really enough do almost any practical calculations one have to be done by hands. The rest are just hypes.<p>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.

No person would ever willingly choose the TI calculator to learn or apply math, but they need them for school. It&#x27;s a similar issue for textbooks, where the publishers can charge very high amounts, since the buyers (students) don&#x27;t have a choice.<p>Really everyone should be learning to use a tool like Mathematica, not a 1996 calculator, but the education system advances slowly...<p>(Also: <a href="http://xkcd.com/768/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;768&#x2F;</a> )

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?

I think people in finances know of even more extreme example of calculator monopoly.<p>My dad still uses HP-12C, a financial calculator made by HP in the 80s (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-12C" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;HP-12C</a>). He&#x27;s been using the same calculator for over 20 years. Extremely reliable and practical. It&#x27;s no wonder people still get them.

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 &quot;approved&quot; graphing calculator. Our teachers told us not to buy anything but the TI-83+, because they wanted to guarantee a &quot;factory reset&quot; before exams. Anything else would waste too much time for them.

Because schools require them. After that every sane person uses a computer with Mathematica&#x2F;Maple&#x2F;Matlab&#x2F;Octave&#x2F;etc.

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].<p>[1] <a href="http://2020science.org/2010/07/11/texas-instruments-graphing-calculators-essential-math-teaching-aid-or-a-scam/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;2020science.org&#x2F;2010&#x2F;07&#x2F;11&#x2F;texas-instruments-graphing...</a>

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

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&#x27;s probably TI&#x27;s fault that I&#x27;m a software developer now.

These things always remind me of [1]. Why are these things still that popular and quite expensive?<p>1: <a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2582" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smbc-comics.com&#x2F;?id=2582</a>

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.<p>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.

I&#x27;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?