The NumWorks graphing calculator

I think a big reason that "the established calculator manufacturers cartel" is so effective is that The College Board (proprietors of SAT college entrance exams and AP curriculum) as well as ACT (another college entrance exam) only seem to all TI products to be used. Because of this, most US high school students effectively have no choice when it comes to calculator purchases.

CAS or no CAS, unless students are permitted to use the device, I don't think it will be commercially successful.

FWIW, the STM32F412 part in the NumWorks is mid-range; that particular line tops out at 1.5M flash and 320K RAM, but the higher-end F469 (which may or may not be available in a compatible package) has 2M flash and 384K RAM.

They also support external DRAM and Flash, but that could require a bit of SW rework (ie "modules" paged into RAM) and probably hurt performance a bit. Not to mention cost more.

Anyway. I _really_ want to see this MathWorks endeavour succeed.

My problem with this is that at the current pricing it is far closer to something like an HP Prime, which by many measures is a vastly superior calculator. Perhaps the design isn't as pretty or intuitive as the NumWorks but it does have a touch screen. The fact that it has RPN (and thus I can actually use it as a calculator) is a big deal for me but probably not important for most people.

It's true that TI is just exploitative, especially when they price the various editions of TI84 which are explicitly required by certain textbooks at nearly double the price of their highest-end NSpire calculators. (Though even then they charge extra for an NSpire with a CAS.) To displace them from that market (at least the local market with which I am familiar) you would have to provide something amazing at an even more amazing price. Doing simply "a whole lot better" at a slightly lower price just isn't enough, it seems, because TI keeps getting business.

HP gives a free emulator and smartphone application which exactly duplicate the Prime so students can just use their phone most of the time and only use the physical calculator in the classroom setting. They have a complete classroom connectivity solution (though it is unfortunately overpriced). It's simply not enough. You have to both cut costs and push hard against TI in innovative ways. Get these things out to schools as kits. Bundle them with 3D printers (on loan if necessary to keep the costs reasonable) so kids can actually make their calculators from parts. Get them involved and then let them keep the result, so that the learn the value of open design. And if you're going to try to do traditional sales, at least drop the cost by a third if not in half.

As an aside, I do wonder if Bernard Parisse is somehow involved in this effort. My understanding is that he is the author of GIAC and has done the CAS systems for HP calculators since the HP49.