The TI-Nspire, destiny of TI?
For more than a decade, Texas Instruments has owned the educational calculator market. Ever since the release of the TI-81 graphing calculator, TI has continued to grow their following by updating that original TI-81 into the TI-82, TI-83, TI-83 plus, and eventually, the TI-84 plus. The TI-84 plus is still surprisingly similar to the TI-81. In spite of the fact that the TI-84 has been incredibly popular, it’s an outdated device. Texas Instruments realized it was time for a new platform.
So in in 2007, Texas Instruments released their new calculator, the TI-Nspire. The improved features compared to the old product line were striking. On the old TI-84, the menus were odd at best, nonsensical at worst. It was hard for beginners just to figure out which button to push, and then the menu would cover the whole display. On the Nspire, drop down menus are the norm, meaning users can remain in the screen they were using and pull down a menu the way they would on a computer. Among other features are the highest resolution screen on a graphing calculator, document creation, a spreadsheet mode, mathprint for almost every mathematical symbols, and a vastly improved system for graphing equations, simplifying the TI-84’s dated interface.
Frankly, the Nspire made the TI-84 look like a fossil, and yet, the first reaction in the market was tepid. Why? Texas Instruments didn’t anticipate the reaction of two influential groups. First, educators were initially hesitant to adopt the TI-Nspire. Many had spent too much in the old TI-84. That was true both in terms of the time spent learning the TI-84 and in terms of the school budget spent on classroom sets of TI-84 calculators. TI tried to alleviate that pain by offering a TI-84 keypad that made the Nspire look and act like a TI-84, but many felt that defeated the purpose of the Nspire. The other group that hesitated about the Nspire was the programmer community. At first, the Nspire wasn’t programmable. Later, an operating system update provided some programming, but it wasn’t enough to win over the hackers.
Lately, the TI-Nspire has been gaining traction. Texas Instruments has noticed, eliminating the Silver Edition of the TI-84. Going forward, however, Texas Instruments finally faces competition from a competitor’s calculator, not just its own TI-84. Casio has announced its response to the Nspire. The Prizm offers many of the same features as the TI-Nspire at a similar cost, but it has two extra features with backlighting and the ability to display color photographs. The Casio Prizm is set to be released in early 2011. For the first time, Casio has a product that can truly compete with the best that Texas Instruments has to offer.
The Nspire finally has traction in the marketplace, but will face stiff competition from the Prizm. The question now is whether the educator loyalty and user support they’ve created over the last 20 years will be enough for the TI-Nspire.
Check out Tech Powered Math for reviews on math education technologies. There you can learn about the TI-89 vs. TI-Nspire.
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