Whatever fond memories you might have of high school, Texas Instruments' TI-84 is an obsolete piece of crap: a 1980s design updated to 1990s technology made with 2000s penny parts and sold for more than $100 a pop to children all but forced to buy them. TI is a notorious lobbyist and has sought laws big and small to maintain this status quo, from mandatory Algebra courses with mandatory TI-84s to examination rules that allow its devices and no others. But the racket is falling apart under pressure from superior alternatives and growing resentment among teachers and students.
While tutoring low-income students in 2011, a Yale math grad named Eli Luberoff began to notice a “horrible inequity” in the system.
“A lot of families simply couldn’t afford to spend $100 on a calculator,” he says, “and it was creating a huge imbalance in access to math tools.”
So, Luberoff created Desmos, a free graphing calculator application for desktop and mobile. He didn’t expect it to turn into a company — but today, more than 40m students and teachers use it.
“Our business model is the exact opposite of TI’s,” says Luberoff: “Their model has always been to give [tech] away for free to textbook companies and force families to buy it at a premium price; our model is to give [tech] away for free to students, and charge textbook companies to integrate it.”
In four years, TI's "other devices" sales have slumped from $2.2bn to $1.4bn, an indicator that it calculators are not selling well.
Logitech’s MX Keys [Amazon] is what it finally took to lure me away from mechanical keyboards. It’s a slim yet solidly-constructed full-size model that’s similar to and superior to Apple’s Magic Keyboard. It’s flat, minimalist, heavy, solid and low-profile, with large backlit keys typeset in something similar to Futura Light. The keys are square with […]
Microsoft is to shut shop on the high streets and malls of America, permanently closing its 116 retail stores. Only 10 were overseas; flagship stores in New York City, London, Sydney, and Redmond will be remain as showrooms that do not sell the products. There will be no layoffs, Microsoft reports. Alarm bells rang when […]
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With our smartphones serving as the vital tether that links us to the rest of our lives, it’s no wonder how low batteries and power emergencies can occasionally feel like a life-and-death situation. I mean, it’s usually not, of course…but darned if it doesn’t feel that way when your indicator is showing only 5 percent […]
Despite all of our most fervent hopes, it doesn’t appear the specter of COVID-19 will be leaving us anytime soon. If anything, the past few weeks seems to indicate the need for social distancing and other preventative measures will likely continue indefinitely from coast to coast for a very, very, very long time. Of course, […]
For all their amazing growth over the past 25 years, the most impressive thing about the monumental rise of Amazon might be the speed and sophistication of their lightning-fast delivery network. Sometimes it doesn’t even take 24 hours for the idea you ordered to be perched right on your front porch, ready for use. The […]
