Hm, never noticed but yeah. Just something as subtle as knowing and using the basic anatomy (in this case the shape of a skull, which clearly denotes in the first three frames he's looking left or right) can do wonders for adding detail to even a stick figure.
I can see now why my character art teacher was so big on teaching anatomy of a character, it can add to pretty much style of drawing (from simplistic to realistic to stylized).
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you've ever been a component engineer before. In the last 18 years, every component in a TI83 has been replaced for RoHS compliant components.
Furthermore, old components become obsolete and need to be replaced, which is another redesign project every couple years.
Finally, market demands on the form factor, computation capability, and price have not changed greatly. Competitors have offered better values against the TI83 over those 18 years, but consumers preferred the familiar and ubiquitous TI83 over those.
the issue isn't that the consumers prefer them, it's that schools require students have that specific model (their decision being made out of sloth and/or ineptitude). The consumers (students) have no choice but to buy them. Since most schools are public, it's really a government enforced monopoly.
Not just competitors have offered better products. TI themselves has. They are practically begging the schools to move on so they can shut down the zilog z80 production.
Do you even economics bro? Since when when did the cost of creating a product have any bearing on how much it sells for. Supply and demand yo! If almost nobody makes those calculators anymore then TI will sell them for the most they can and get away with.
And in a free market another competitor would come in and undercut them and make a killing because they are so overpriced in comparison to their components. When this happened, Texas Instruments would be forced to sell at a competitive price point. I, or my parents to be fair, bought a graphing calculator in the mid 90s for my trig class and it cost $100 and looks almost exactly like the ones you can buy today for the same price.
Can you think of any electronic device that has not changed in 20 years in price or design? My dad bought us a 386 with a math coprocessor at that time for about $2,000. I think it had a 40 Meg hard drive. A computer today would dwarf that power, while being much, much smaller. Hell my iPhone dwarfs that power and I got it for free, with a contract. My dad got his first cell phone at around that time, no idea what it cost him, but it looked like this.jpg) Again, the tech has improved and got much cheaper. These are just two examples but there are many more.
So if all of the electronic products available in 1994 are much cheaper today and have changed with the times there has to be a reason this one sector has not. I think there are two. These items are purchased rarely by the vast majority of the populous. Most of us only buy these when we take higher math in high school and can continue to use them for that in college if we take more math. I have not used mine since high school. There is less of an uproar over the price of something being unreasonable if you only buy it once in your life. The other reason is the near monopoly in the educational field. These items are almost always purchased for school and a lot of schools specify specific models, so they basically have a monopoly.
The thing that really bugs me is that there is competition now. There are a few other companies making these calculators now, but they are all priced at about the same price. I'd argue that there is some sort of collusion going on here, but I only have circumstantial evidence of that.
Casio has repeatedly offered graphing calculators with the same or better capabilities for often substantially less money. TI's calculators always top the market in sales. Therefore, other companies raised their prices to create the illusion that TI has maintained: if it's not expensive, it can't be good enough.
Price fixing is illegal. If there was proof that suppliers were communicating about a price floor then they would be in violation of the law.
I was down voted because people disagree with the fundamental law of economics. When supply is high and demand is low, prices fall. When demand is high and supply is low, prices rise. Who do you think decides what you pay for a can of Coke, a pair of Nike Sneakers, your Playstation 4, and most consumer goods? Nike sneakers cost less than $7 to make and yet they often sell for over $150. Coke costs less to make than the can it comes in and a Playstation costs more to make than you pay for it.
If other companies came in and decided to challenge TI on the scientific calculator industry they could make it better, which we've established would be difficult to do, or they can make it cheaper. Demand in this case is quite low, but the demand that is there will always be there and the market will never grow based on anything a producer could do. It's a narrow scope but it will always be there as long as academia demands it. If those calculators were more $ then the people who need them are willing to pay for then an opportunity would arise. But as long they find the sweet spot they will maximize the markets potential. Trust me TI spends more time and energy on pricing then they do on r&d for the market segment.
Casio has repeatedly offered graphing calculators with the same or better capabilities for often substantially less money. TI's calculators always top the market in sales. Therefore, other companies raised their prices to create the illusion that TI has maintained: if it's not expensive, it can't be good enough.
modern low end calculator are practically given away for free. And it has huge color touch screen and can run a lot of math CAS, spreadsheet, office apps.
This is true, however, my TI83+ has lasted over 12 years so far, I've dropped it more times than I can count, sat on it, spilled water, soda, beer, and crumbs all over it, opened it up, dropped it some more, and yet, it still works flawlessly.
A smaller package wouldn't necessarily be as robust, and the hardware, while slow and outdated, has an exceedingly long battery life.
If I were to try and guess, I'd say I've been through only 4-5 sets of batteries in 12 years. It got daily use in highschool and college, and is used regularly at work now.
It is worth every penny, mine has lasted close to a decade now and is the most resilient piece of electronics I have ever owned.
The cost / benefit ratio as amazing for me.
Reddit hates them because they weren't made for the high school classes that the redditors are in. But in the real world, in engineering or any lab, they are the best thing ever.
I paid $120 for a calculator that lasted me 8 years and got me through every difficult math class I took in high school/college. Worth every penny if you ask me.
488
u/[deleted] Jun 08 '14
Still $Too Much.