TI: A step back towards the TI community?

[Scipi]

I think this is great news. I think something that's helping turn their views is the support Casio is gaining from the development community as well.

(Not that it's generally a good idea anyway since everyone will use it then)

[Netham45]I don't know what you mean?

[aeTIos]

This is really cool. I hope TI will turn more and more to the community again. I seriously hope they improve Lua. (Isn't Lua on the nspire about as fast as asm on the 84+ series?)

[Keoni29]

It'd be great if they packed some simple games with the calculators along with the source. Then people realize that games can be made for them. The first LEGO mindstorms model was designed for educational purposes. LEGO saw that people were hacking their products, so they made a newer model with more powerful features.

[apcalc]

Great article and great news!  Glad to see TI making the right moves!

[Lionel Debroux]

Ooooh... guys, don't be so gullible
OK, TI mentions a third-party tool in passing... and what ? Old-timers like me can assure you that it's not the first time they mention third-party software...
But they still show us how much they want to keep their calculators locked down and underwhelming, and how much they disrespect our basic user rights. And this remains as flat out inacceptable as ever. It's even more unacceptable now that we used our direct contacts at TI, to try and make TI understand what's at stake, and what the highly predictable consequences of their disrespect are going to be. It will be their loss...

[aeTIos]

So you don't think TI will eventually make their calcs less locked-down?

[mlytle0]

I think TI is making a huge marketing mistake with the Education-centric Nspire in a more subtle way.  Education is in a massive bubble right now (like a lot of other things, as well).

Young people, trying to not end up being burger flippers for the rest of their lives, are borrowing heavily to go to college to avoid that fate.  Example: I bought a used textbook on Linear Algebra on Amazon to have as a reference.  I paid 30 bucks used, and the "new" price was well north of $200!   That's a bubble!  In a year, or two, or three, the whole education system crashes, as (1) Student loans become rare because of Austerity programs (think Greece or Europe, that's coming here, too) (2) Students realise there are no jobs to train for (well, a whole lot fewer, anyway).  

TI is trying, with the Nspire, to ride the same bubble as the people selling $250 textbooks.  You can guess where that's going....They'll just get the worst bugs worked out, and by then the market they're targeting, will have disappeared.

[aeTIos]

I see what you did there. You should write a letter to TI, your arguments are pretty good.

[Lionel Debroux]

aetios:
1) it's not just a matter of being somewhat less locked down. The only acceptable thing for them to do is to provide users a level of openness equivalent to that of the TI-Z80 and TI-68k series - or better, of course.
When the manufacturer respects us (which, sadly, is extremely unlikely to occur...), we can respect them. Not before.

2) TI-Cares, which mlytle0 would certainly be writing to, is infamously known for filtering a huge amount of useful things.
And the top management, which I have personally reached to, has already proved since then that they're unable to implement common sense measures to reduce the risk that TI's Education division loses potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, just like Sony did, due to their aberrant behaviour with the PS3.
Seriously, what makes you think that writing a letter to TI (to tell them about another way they risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars) would do any good ?

[aeTIos]

TI is only locking it down because teachers want this, isn't it?

[Lionel Debroux]

We don't have to care about the reasons why they're disrespecting our basic user rights (and reducing their sales as a result, even if by a small amount).

[jwalker]

TI is only locking it down because teachers want this, isn't it?

That and programs like OSlauncher and PTT Killer can be created.

[aeTIos]

Okay
What made me think that writing a letter could help, um, yeah I don't know. It's just weird imo that they lock everything down without any respect for the user rights. I'm sure the community has done a lot for TI in direct and indirect ways.

[Lionel Debroux]

jwalker: you've got things backwards... Trying to lock down stuff (and failing at it, because it's fundamentally impossible) does not make it less likely that things they don't like occur - it makes it more likely. I've said that face to face to TI's top management, in TI's Paris offices, last year.

PTTKiller could have been made, and released, more than two years before it ended up being released (on the day after the release of a new, underwhelming OS version). Draw your own conclusions.

aeTIos: it's indeed a fact that the community did a lot for TI, in direct and indirect ways. With calculators that are less open and versatile, they'd have had a harder time becoming the market leader. Like hundreds of thousands of persons over many years, I bought a TI-89, instead of a Casio Graph 100 (which I knew how to operate, unlike the TI-89, because I had used a schoolmate's Graph 100 the year before !), because it was possible to make cool things with it.

[aeTIos]

Do people really care about PTT? I've never had to use it (And I can't on my calc since I killed it).