Personally, what I think is that eventually they might try to remove certain features from the 84+ or purposely break compatibility with certain assembly programs. This could discourage their small portion of calc customers that like to play games or program. At this point, they can promote Lua on the CX even harder, so people will get a CX instead of a 84+. What sucks about Lua, though, is that while it's powerful, it's still not giving us full freedom on the TI-Nspire models.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the TI community quickly found out how to break the new 84+ protection. After all, a lot of the 8x programmers here have been around for more than a decade and there's much more doc available for z80 models than there is for ARM ones. I'm sure BrandonW, ThePenguin77, Calc84maniac or KermMartian will find something.

Darn this sucks, but are we sure there's no way to downgrade or install patched OSes?

There might be a way, be it won't be the usual way to install an OS.

-Are the RSA keys any different or something?

The OS in the standard 2.55MP. So the RSA keys we know of are the same.
But there is probably something else in addition...

Also does it blocks downgrades back to 2.55MP, should a new OS come out?

I suppose you can still downgrade to 2.55MP, shoud a new OS come out.
It's just that I hardly see how they could permanently store the minimum installable OS version.

-Does the 2.55MP included still includes third-party apps compatibility and the Asm()/AsmComp()/Asmprgm commands?
-Does Output() runs at the same speed as on other calcs?

It's the same 2.55MP OS you know of.
So all commands are here, and all bugs too.

-Is it possible to install patches after installing the OS, such as Zstart? Or will the OS give an error on boot once it's modified?

According to tests with the emulator, the boot does not seem to check the OS on boot, but only at installation time. So I suppose you can still patch oncalc.

I going to laugh if it's something ridiculously easy to bypass, like a CRC32. I'm also not going to believe a word of this until I see and analyze a dump.

Edit: Have you tried force loading a certificate from an older model and then reinstalling the OS? Or erasing the certificate?

I thought it was the OS and not the boot code that could remove Asm()?

So if they actually do plan on removing it, we can always fall back on this.

Man TI really loves downgrade protection, don't they? What's it for though? Still don't see a point to it...

Wait, is this bad? Can you still run applications and C programs?
For someone who doesn't need 3rd part OSs is this bad?

Well, about MathPrint, you can still disable it in the MODE menu, although I think some programs still had compatibility issues with MP OSes even in Classic mode.

Wait, is this bad? Can you still run applications and C programs?
For someone who doesn't need 3rd part OSs is this bad?

2.53 and 2.55 have a ton of glitches that make Asm programming hard. Many apps and programs will not work correctly unless you use 2.43 or older.