Re: A89: The future of 89/92+ Shells(AMS2.0,92+SDK)


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Re: A89: The future of 89/92+ Shells(AMS2.0,92+SDK)





----- Original Message -----
From: <Airswit@aol.com>
To: <assembly-89@lists.ticalc.org>
Sent: Monday, November 01, 1999 2:54 PM
Subject: Re: A89: The future of 89/92+ Shells(AMS2.0,92+SDK)


>
>     Why does TI always put all their focus on the TI-83?  It isn't the
best
> calculator, or the cheapest, but they always come out with apps and new
> software for it first, even though the 89&92+ have been out twice as long.
>

The TI-83 is their selling point. It's easy to use and costs $50 (I think)
less than those confusing TI-89s that boggle the mind of most math students.
(I once had to stand up in front of my class and explain how to program
Quadform on their 82/83 calculators. If you don't know already, you'd be
incredibly surprised at how stupid most students are when it comes to
getting their calculator to do anything.)

Take the most ignorant, stupid newbie on this list, take away 90% of his
graphing-calculator intelligance, and you've got your average math student
with a TI82/83(+). I don't mean this as in insult- most of these people are
great at other things- but their calculator scares them to death. And the
math teachers aren't much better themselves. This is why TI sells so many
83/83+ calculators and spends so much time doing TI83+ stuff. It's the
easiest to use calculator. I've let some long-time 82 users borrow my 85/86
for a while to do their math because their battery ran out or they forgot it
or something like that, and the thing makes no sense to them. They might be
able to do simple stuff OK, but every 5 minutes it's like "where's this" or
"where's that"? Hand them an 89 and they're completely lost. It makes no
sense to them.

So TI sells a ton of 83+s. And that's where their focus is- you can tell by
looking at the Eighty-something newsletter. I saw it beacuse my old math
teacher got it and I looked at it every now and then. When the 83+ came out,
the teacher who wrote the headline article about it was more concerned about
whether or not they can press the exact same buttons to get the exact same
results than the cool new features. This Assembly-89 list is not a fair
represenation of the people who use graphing calculators- we are an elite
club of sorts. We get it. Most people don't.

-Zero



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