Scientific Specific Units

[Tim Wessman]

(12-06-2015 10:33 AM)towe Wrote:  There's still a lot of bugs 2 years after release.
The translation quality is still horrible, 2 years after release.
The user keyboard doesn't work properly for all keys - 2 years after release.

You'd think such rather massive issues would've been fixed already, at least in the months since the last update.

Thanks for your reply. I understand where you are coming from now and will try to address what I can.

I'd like to go in reverse order and start first with your comment of "You'd think such rather massive issues would've been fixed already". To that, I would respond with a question right back - "Massive according to whom?"

The problem is that we as humans tend to only focus on issues that we see, or things that directly impact us. Do that vast majority of users think there is a massive problem with the user keys? Nope. Unfortunately, the vast majority of users of Prime have never touched user definable anything, nor would ever do so even if it were heavily promoted and 2/3 of the manual were devoted to its use. You and I are not normal users, nor in essence the main target customer for Prime.

I *personally* am on your side in agreement that the user keys have problems right now and I'd love nothing better then to spend the many hours to fix it (not a simple task unfortunately due to some lower level architectural changes that would be required first before being able to even start touching what you see as the problems there).

However, every issue must be weighed against many factors and has many different groups providing feedback.

One of the most important factor is "How many people are being impacted by <issue X>?". If the answer is "very few" then it will become much less likely to be addresses over another issue that might impact 50% or more of users.

The next most important question is "What *other* things may not be done if we take the time to resolve <issue X>?"

For example, let's say that it were possible to give this choice:

1. Fix and make the unit conversion UI better then any prior calculator.
2. Make base conversions work even better then any prior calculator.
3. Make RPN work in the CAS.
4. Return 10MB of RAM to the end user for use in programs (giving you double what you have right now)
5. Implement a 3D grapher.
6. Fix the user keyboard.

Assume all these items take the same amount of time to implement. Which one is the correct choice? I suspect you might have a hard time deciding. I suspect whichever answer you pick might differ from mine, and probably differ from a large number of other people's choices.

The point I am trying to get at here is that it is NOT an easy process to decide what to resolve, what new to implement, and in many cases what *is* a major problem. For example, you cite horrible translations. I'm not certain we've ever received huge major complaints from distributors, educators, support lines, emails, customers, etc on translations. Sure, a few people have commented on some individual bad translations here or there, and we've corrected those when they come in. There has been no "massive outcry" about horrible translations though. In fact, we've received quite a bit of feedback generally that they are pretty good.

Sometimes however, the suggested translations provided as "what the translation should be" *aren't* good translations and the HP translators come back with extremely solid reasoning why they have used the word/phrase they have used. For example, a math term that is common in one region, but in every other country speaking that language it is a different word. Translation is a very difficult thing unfortunately.

If you have specific areas of feedback, please send them to one of the support paths available - phone, email, etc. Sending things to me directly, or posting on a discussion group like this (which is not an official HP operated support site) is NOT going to get the visibility that you'd get by emailing a calculator distributor, calling the support lines, or sending an email to support.

Now for your first and my last comment, I don't think anyone can reasonably say that Prime is worse now then when it started. True, one may argue plenty about whether some of the issues that have been resolved never should have happened. True, one can argue that it was a mistake to switch away from the 50g codebase (it wasn't ), and there are plenty of other things to argue about.

I'd argue though, that there are much fewer issues then there were before, and the issues being found are generally less and less critical. I'd also argue there there is much more capability is in Prime now then existed two years ago. I would even argue that despite the initial roughness at launch, it was the correct time to launch. It takes AGES for new calculator to be accepted (speaking from a product marketing lifecycle time frame) and move into the place where it begins to sell well. Waiting an additional 2 years till now would have done nothing to speed that up unfortunately.

There are plenty of good signs that overall Prime is moving in a good direction, and being well received generally. I mean, just recently THE MAJOR TI USER SITE IN EUROPE (tiplanet.org) placed the HP Prime as tied for top choice for the calculator to purchase! (It would have been #1 except for a problem with battery life when testing for an exam starting requirement in 2017). I don't think anyone would have seen that recommendation coming just 2 years back...

Anyway, I hope I have been able to explain a bit of the difficult reasoning that goes into figuring out what to work on and when.