The actuel Prime future...

[dbbotkin]

Having been a user of hand-held calculators for a very long time, I foresee that we are coming to a tipping point, driven in large part by the educational market. There is an overarching requirement in that market for fairness within the resources available for use by students, particularly in the 'testing' aspect of education. If "fairness" is the stated goal, what then lies behind it? I submit that the integrity of the testing system--and therefore the existence of the testing business--is being protected.

That translates into a simple rule: any device used in a test must be set to a state of known functionality. In short, wiped and restored to permit only some known functions that can be verified by the inclusion of some 'signal' in the firmware (e.g. a LED).

No student would want their iPhone or Android wiped--restoration is time-consuming and risky--and putting a personal item into a known state would be problematic. This means that there will continue to be a need for a high-end calculator like the Prime.

As many students will want to go beyond the classroom instruction and explore the capabilities of the Prime, or even extend its capabilities by creating their own programs as I did back in the day, there will naturally be many more functions than as permitted in testing.

The market that has been shrinking is the "first job after school" market. Engineers and scientists used slide rules long after graduation because the methodology was the same, but as the computer came on the scene, slide rules disappeared from the workplace. The same progression happened with calculators, but more slowly due to the convergence of calculator and computer power for most purposes.

The hp12C continues strong in finance--at least in the 'first-job' market--because NPV calculations are pretty much the same as they were forty years ago and a real 12C is iconic.

In order to move the Prime into new markets--e.g. the electronic hobbyist--there needs to be a better interface with the physical world so that instrumentation and control can be implemented by the Prime. The data steam interface is a start, but to succeed, it must be open source and manage output as well as input. Ideally, there should be a partner organization that is like the 'old-HP' with an engineering expertise as opposed to the 'PC d'jour' and 'sell more printer cartridges' marketing that is all that HPQ can offer today.