HP Prime: The Logic of Purchasing

[Gerald H]

Consider the two statements:

The targeted consumers of the Prime are users in scholastic institutions who will sit exams;

&

Such users require an easily mastered (colloquially intuitive) operating system.

Are the two statements

1 Contradictory, meaning if one is true the other must be false;

2 Contrary, meaning at most one can be true;

3 Sub-contrary, meaning at most one can be false;

4 Equivalent, meaning both have the same truth value?

What I'm angling at is the discrepancy between the justifications of the Prime's limitations & the incredible difficulty of getting the machine to articulate my wishes agreeably.

[BartDB]

(03-31-2015 09:06 AM)Gerald H Wrote:  Consider the two statements:

The targeted consumers of the Prime are users in scholastic institutions who will sit exams;

&

Such users require an easily mastered (colloquially intuitive) operating system.

Are the two statements

1 Contradictory, meaning if one is true the other must be false;

2 Contrary, meaning at most one can be true;

3 Sub-contrary, meaning at most one can be false;

4 Equivalent, meaning both have the same truth value?

What I'm angling at is the discrepancy between the justifications of the Prime's limitations & the incredible difficulty of getting the machine to articuate my wishes agreeably.

I think none of your options 1..4 apply.

Both statements can be true at the same time.

They are not equivalent: the first one identifies a group, the second one asserts a characteristic of the identified group (but that characteristic does not necessarily uniquely identify the group of the first statement).

I think the questions are:
1) does the Prime live up to the those statements?
2) when they do sit some national exam (of any of the countries where it is approved for such), will there be embarrassment for HP if the Prime pops out a wrong answer?

Best regards.

[Gerald H]

(03-31-2015 09:18 AM)BartDB Wrote:  

(03-31-2015 09:06 AM)Gerald H Wrote:  Consider the two statements:

The targeted consumers of the Prime are users in scholastic institutions who will sit exams;

&

Such users require an easily mastered (colloquially intuitive) operating system.

Are the two statements

1 Contradictory, meaning if one is true the other must be false;

2 Contrary, meaning at most one can be true;

3 Sub-contrary, meaning at most one can be false;

4 Equivalent, meaning both have the same truth value?

What I'm angling at is the discrepancy between the justifications of the Prime's limitations & the incredible difficulty of getting the machine to articuate my wishes agreeably.

I think none of your options 1..4 apply.

Both statements can be true at the same time.

They are not equivalent: the first one identifies a group, the second one asserts a characteristic of the identified group (but that characteristic does not necessarily uniquely identify the group of the first statement).

I think the questions are:
1) does the Prime live up to the those statements?
2) when they do sit some national exam (of any of the countries where it is approved for such), will there be embarrassment for HP if the Prime pops out a wrong answer?

Best regards.

Your 2nd sentence discounts 1 & 2.

Your 3rd sentence discounts 4 (Although I doubt your reasoning).

You haven't dealt with 3.

[Joe Horn]

(03-31-2015 09:06 AM)Gerald H Wrote:  ... What I'm angling at is the discrepancy between the justifications of the Prime's limitations & the incredible difficulty of getting the machine to articuate my wishes agreeably.

Thinking out loud: Perhaps this is because your wishes (and mine) differ from the wishes of the targeted customers (students). Our wishes include understanding Prime well enough to make it do any mathematical task that springs to mind. In other words, we are trying to wrap our brains around Prime. But only a vanishingly tiny percent of students wish to wrap their brains around anything. (Harsh but true.) Their only wish for Prime is to use it to do that night's homework. That involves using no more nor less than the Prime's functionality demonstrated for them by the teacher the day before. So, getting Prime to articulate their wishes is trivial ... which is the opposite of your and my experience.

Disclaimer: The above was my opinion when I wrote it, but might no longer be my opinion by time you read it, since learning never stops.

[BartDB]

(03-31-2015 09:27 AM)Gerald H Wrote:  Your 2nd sentence discounts 1 & 2.

Your 3rd sentence discounts 4 (Although I doubt your reasoning).

You haven't dealt with 3.

Hmmm, indeed. Now there's the thought: if the characteristic of the target group is mis-identified:
i.e. users in scholastic institutions never require an easily mastered (colloquially intuitive) operating system.
- Then any device implementing such an operating system would automatically rule out the target group.

However, the converse is not necessarily true: not targeting users in scholastic institutions does not mean such users do not require an easily mastered (colloquially intuitive) operating system - and any device implementing such an operating system might still be used by them.

Best regards.

[BartDB]

(03-31-2015 09:28 AM)Joe Horn Wrote:  

(03-31-2015 09:06 AM)Gerald H Wrote:  ... What I'm angling at is the discrepancy between the justifications of the Prime's limitations & the incredible difficulty of getting the machine to articuate my wishes agreeably.

Thinking out loud: Perhaps this is because your wishes (and mine) differ from the wishes of the targeted customers (students). Our wishes include understanding Prime well enough to make it do any mathematical task that springs to mind. In other words, we are trying to wrap our brains around Prime. But only a vanishingly tiny percent of students wish to wrap their brains around anything. (Harsh but true.) Their only wish for Prime is to use it to do that night's homework. That involves using no more nor less than the Prime's functionality demonstrated for them by the teacher the day before. So, getting Prime to articulate their wishes is trivial ... which is the opposite of your and my experience.

Disclaimer: The above was my opinion when I wrote it, but might no longer be my opinion by time you read it, since learning never stops.

I agree - with both your paragraph and disclaimer :-)

[salvomic]

(03-31-2015 09:28 AM)Joe Horn Wrote:  ... Perhaps this is because your wishes (and mine) differ from the wishes of the targeted customers (students). Our wishes include understanding Prime well enough to make it do any mathematical task that springs to mind...

Disclaimer: The above was my opinion when I wrote it, but might no longer be my opinion by time you read it, since learning never stops.

yes, me too: I agree with every word, included disclaimer
We wish also Prime to be for engineers (not only students), and we want to squeeze it as a lemon: it *must* make any mathematical task, yes!

Salvo

[Thomas Radtke]

Both statements can be true. The intended target audience for a product can be chosen to not match it. This is even required when there's no matching target audience at all for an existing product.

The second statement suggests that the Prime is an appropriate tool, but doesn't imply it. This is a good marketing move when everything at the engineering level failed, and the product has to be sold nonetheless.

IMO.

[dbbotkin]

Why assume that the target-market is the student? HP is not going to make money selling these calculators: they want to sell printers and computers and tablets to the institutional market and they are using the HP Prime to establish and capture that market.

Waiting for an iOS version of the emulator? (don't count on it) The connectivity kit on the Mac? (very doubtful) Why? Because those devices compete with HP's product: a Windows/Android device.

All this discussion about "students and engineers" misses the point. The reason someone buys a product is not necessarily the reason the company that sells the product created it.

The HP prime is a great product as a calculator. Is the present HP a great company? (outlook not so good)

Donal

[Han]

(03-31-2015 04:25 PM)dbbotkin Wrote:  Why assume that the target-market is the student? HP is not going to make money selling these calculators: they want to sell printers and computers and tablets to the institutional market and they are using the HP Prime to establish and capture that market.

HP is a global company. While they may not have a strong presence in the classrooms in the US, they have a strong presence outside of the US (that's my understanding, anyway).

Quote:Waiting for an iOS version of the emulator? (don't count on it) The connectivity kit on the Mac? (very doubtful) Why? Because those devices compete with HP's product: a Windows/Android device.

While Apple devices may be competing with HP hardware, there is no reason for them to not invest in giving their software a larger user base. People are going to buy (hardware) however they want. A small app isn't going to make any dent in their purchasing decisions. The current reason they don't exist is likely due to the lack of funding from bean counters.

[toml_12953]

(03-31-2015 10:15 AM)BartDB Wrote:  

(03-31-2015 09:27 AM)Gerald H Wrote:  Your 2nd sentence discounts 1 & 2.

Your 3rd sentence discounts 4 (Although I doubt your reasoning).

You haven't dealt with 3.

Hmmm, indeed. Now there's the thought: if the characteristic of the target group is mis-identified:
i.e. users in scholastic institutions never require an easily mastered (colloquially intuitive) operating system.
- Then any device implementing such an operating system would automatically rule out the target group.

It doesn't rule out the target group at all. Just because they don't require an easily mastered OS, that doesn't mean they wouldn't use one if it were available.

Tom L

[Han]

Apple, a company well known for its simplistic yet well polished interfaces, and with much more spending power, still managed to bungle their iPhone 4:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple...olding-th/

This is a company with plenty of money, on their 4th generation of hardware, with a much larger group of engineers, designers, programmers, etc. and yet they blame the user for what is essentially a flaw in their phone. (You can also find similar issues with later generation phones such as "bendgate" with the iPhone 6).

And what has come about of it? Pretty much nothing. They're still a top notch company with plenty of consumers willing to overspend on prettied-up hardware (I must admit, though, that their OS X and iOS have very good interfaces). The world goes on. Why? Because eventually the later revisions will push out the previous ones. The way products are "updated" these days enables businesses to push their products out early. And consumers are clearly ok with that because many of them understand that there will generally be free fixes in the near future. And in the worse case, they can send their products in for replacement.

That's just a fact of how businesses work these days. (Let's also keep in mind that the developers are a very different group from management) I don't like it myself, but it is what it is. As a consumer, we can either wait or become an early adopter.

[Han]

(04-01-2015 01:44 PM)toml_12953 Wrote:  It doesn't rule out the target group at all. Just because they don't require an easily mastered OS, that doesn't mean they wouldn't use one if it were available.

Tom L

That's a big "if" -- how many complex systems do you know of can be easily mastered? Wouldn't you agree that "complex systems that can be easily mastered" is an oxymoron?

[dbbotkin]

(04-01-2015 07:05 PM)Han Wrote:  

(04-01-2015 01:44 PM)toml_12953 Wrote:  It doesn't rule out the target group at all. Just because they don't require an easily mastered OS, that doesn't mean they wouldn't use one if it were available.

Tom L

That's a big "if" -- how many complex systems do you know of can be easily mastered? Wouldn't you agree that "complex systems that can be easily mastered" is an oxymoron?

That depends on what is meant by "mastered". Take sex, for example . . ..
Like iOs, an intuitive user interface that is both beautiful and functional, and while easy to use, can support applications that in themselves, are complex systems.

My point is that, like in a great game, "mastery" should be managed in levels and not require much of anything to play at level one. Having owned (and mastered) most of HP's calculators from HP67 through HP48, I did not find the Prime either intuitive or easily mastered. The reason being that unlike the '67 where computational complexity was available only by adding a program on a card, the Prime comes packed with programs and at least two possible user interfaces (RPN & CAS) and with the Android, two visual configurations. It is the Swiss Army Knife of calculators.

[Sukiari]

I'm a new member here and I joined after reading the many fascinating posts in the archive and more recently, on this modern incarnation of the forum.

I am also relatively new to the HP calculator world, but I have a 12C, a 48G, and a 50G. All three are amazing products, and one of the most important things about them is that they are *high quality* machines that have a finished quality to them.

I looked at the Prime with great interest when it came out. After reading about it and playing with the emulator, I can say that I would be interested in it, if it were finished. I don't like the idea of buying a calculator that has admitted problems, with only promises to improve it later.

So while I'm not responding to the original post exactly, I think that there is very clear logic in my decision. I do realize that we live in a beta-quality world now, with everything from phones to video games to Tesla automobiles receiving bug fixes but I'm not that kind of buyer.

I hope HP takes this to heart and devotes more time and testing to their next product, or at least keeps the Prime in production long enough to actually finish it. This is not to denigrate the hard work put into the product, but more of a beef with the business decision to release a beta quality calculator without a big red warning label on the box.

[Joe Horn]

(04-02-2015 05:35 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  I am also relatively new to the HP calculator world, but I have a 12C, a 48G, and a 50G. All three are amazing products, and one of the most important things about them is that they are *high quality* machines that have a finished quality to them.

Yeah, NOW they do, after the bugs in the early versions got ironed out, which took many years and many revisions. And not only were bugs removed, but missing features got added too. At least that's certainly true of the 48 and 50, which (unlike the 12C) are very complicated graphing calculators, like Prime.

Quote:I looked at the Prime with great interest when it came out. After reading about it and playing with the emulator, I can say that I would be interested in it, if it were finished. I don't like the idea of buying a calculator that has admitted problems, with only promises to improve it later.

In that case, you should certainly wait as many years to buy a Prime as elapsed between the product announcements of the 48 and 50 and your purchase of them. That way you'll be giving the Prime the same chance of being "complete" as the 48 and 50 eventually became.

The reason that so many people at MoHPC got Primes right away is because most of us are both "early adopters" of technology in general, and fans of HP calculators specifically. That's why I had an HP 48 version "A", and a beta 50g, neither of which had the "finished quality" you see in your 48 and 50. What does the VERSION command return on your 48G? "R"? Aha! See what I mean?

[Angus]

Well, of course there will be many bugs removed in the future.

What cannot be changed is the general concept of the calculator. What bothers me and others (read the internet) are effects resulting from the design approach and its implementation. That is have a school calulator to sell numbers, merge with a already available cas and have the universal weapon with minimal effords.... THAT can never be corrected, because it would mean to fully change the inner working on the one hand (what would be close to a redesign) and on the other side change concepts students seem to be finde with.

I often miss passion in little details. Practical wise... I don't know if there will be updates in that direction. i doubt it. I would expect to see more good looking features stiffed into the prime than reworking given modules. Understandable in a way. An extended package looks better that a re visited package without extensions.

A prime-pro fully developed around the cas would be an option / but NOT under economical considerations. HP managment would have to be convinced of generating profit with such a device and when I think about what seems to be their main motivation with the prime THAT is off the table.

So in my eyes you cannot compare evolution of the prime with other calculators.

[Sukiari]

(04-02-2015 07:18 AM)Joe Horn Wrote:  Yeah, NOW they do, after the bugs in the early versions got ironed out, which took many years and many revisions. And not only were bugs removed, but missing features got added too. At least that's certainly true of the 48 and 50, which (unlike the 12C) are very complicated graphing calculators, like Prime.

The 48G / GX, to my knowledge, did not have any major showstopper bugs when it came out. Of course there were minor bugs that were fixed over time. But the 48 series was birthed in a different era, where customers would not accept a beta product that had a large number of problems on release with promises to fix them with Internet-delivered updates at some point in the future. One glaring issue that I have with the Prime is that the CAS and the "home" modes are different. Why? It looks to me as if this decision was made because the CAS was already more or less done, and it was just an easier way to get the features into the machine at the expense of usability. I'm sure you know that the 49/50G has no such separation of modes - there is one interface and you can use your CAS and your other calculator functions from within it. For years on this board Casio was derided because of this very issue - everything was in its own mode and they didn't play well together.

Quote:In that case, you should certainly wait as many years to buy a Prime as elapsed between the product announcements of the 48 and 50 and your purchase of them. That way you'll be giving the Prime the same chance of being "complete" as the 48 and 50 eventually became. The reason that so many people at MoHPC got Primes right away is because most of us are both "early adopters" of technology in general, and fans of HP calculators specifically. That's why I had an HP 48 version "A", and a beta 50g, neither of which had the "finished quality" you see in your 48 and 50. What does the VERSION command return on your 48G? "R"? Aha! See what I mean?

It may now be true that the MoHPC members comprise the majority of HP's calculator customers. In the old days, many people from a huge array of fields sought them out because they offered functionality that other calculators did not. Let's be honest here - HP's competition is not TI and their textbook aid market. It's Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab that HP needs to target and beat with better usability and features. People who already have a working, stable, mature CAS on their phone won't likely accept a beta product in a new hardware platform unless it's better.

Of the people here who bought a 67, 41/42, or 48 series machine - did they buy them because they wanted to be early adopters? Or did they buy them primarily because the tool was useful for their daily work? I realize that HP is taking a stab at the school calculator market - it is huge - but to make any inroads there would take a miracle. Meanwhile the RPN-trained professional engineering, surveying, and general sciences market doesn't even have a feature-complete RPN mode.

A beta quality student school calculator might be just the thing if you're a calculator enthusiast but I'm not sure that this can be a bread and butter market for HP. In any event, again I'm not trying to lay the blame for what is ultimately, a poor business decision, at the feet of the Prime's developers. They did not make the call to release the product before it was ready. And I'm not ruling out the possibility of buying one myself some day either, but as you say it might be a decade before it's done "enough" to consider for my needs.

One final thought I have, though - HP used to be a company that had a reputation for making the highest quality products one could buy. While the 48 series had bugs, it was also so far above and beyond the competition that they seemed minor in comparison. The HP-48, in all its incarnations (including the 49 and 50 in my opinion), is a legendary product and people actually love those gadgets. It'd be great to see that standard of quality again and it would be great for both business and corporate pride. A superb quality pocket calculator with real buttons running a world class CAS, with RPN for the millions of people still holding onto their 48s and 49s and 50s for dear life would sell like hotcakes, but the Prime isn't it (yet?).

In any event don't be too hard on me. I'm only telling it like I see it, and while I'm relatively new to HP's calculator products I do have perspective on this issue from a number of angles.

[Gerald H]

(04-02-2015 08:39 AM)Angus Wrote:  Well, of course there will be many bugs removed in the future.

What cannot be changed is the general concept of the calculator. What bothers me and others (read the internet) are effects resulting from the design approach and its implementation. That is have a school calulator to sell numbers, merge with a already available cas and have the universal weapon with minimal effords.... THAT can never be corrected, because it would mean to fully change the inner working on the one hand (what would be close to a redesign) and on the other side change concepts students seem to be finde with.

I often miss passion in little details. Practical wise... I don't know if there will be updates in that direction. i doubt it. I would expect to see more good looking features stiffed into the prime than reworking given modules. Understandable in a way. An extended package looks better that a re visited package without extensions.

A prime-pro fully developed around the cas would be an option / but NOT under economical considerations. HP managment would have to be convinced of generating profit with such a device and when I think about what seems to be their main motivation with the prime THAT is off the table.

So in my eyes you cannot compare evolution of the prime with other calculators.

A very exceptionalist approach: Most people regard people as a group apart from other animals but I think that's just because none of those people are gorillas.

Similarly I'm sure most Primes regard themselves as no part of calculator evolution - but I see no reason for a human to believe the usual economic forces have ceased to operate for this one product.

[Gerald H]

(04-04-2015 08:10 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  

(04-02-2015 07:18 AM)Joe Horn Wrote:  Yeah, NOW they do, after the bugs in the early versions got ironed out, which took many years and many revisions. And not only were bugs removed, but missing features got added too. At least that's certainly true of the 48 and 50, which (unlike the 12C) are very complicated graphing calculators, like Prime.

The 48G / GX, to my knowledge, did not have any major showstopper bugs when it came out. Of course there were minor bugs that were fixed over time. But the 48 series was birthed in a different era, where customers would not accept a beta product that had a large number of problems on release with promises to fix them with Internet-delivered updates at some point in the future. One glaring issue that I have with the Prime is that the CAS and the "home" modes are different. Why? It looks to me as if this decision was made because the CAS was already more or less done, and it was just an easier way to get the features into the machine at the expense of usability. I'm sure you know that the 49/50G has no such separation of modes - there is one interface and you can use your CAS and your other calculator functions from within it. For years on this board Casio was derided because of this very issue - everything was in its own mode and they didn't play well together.

Quote:In that case, you should certainly wait as many years to buy a Prime as elapsed between the product announcements of the 48 and 50 and your purchase of them. That way you'll be giving the Prime the same chance of being "complete" as the 48 and 50 eventually became. The reason that so many people at MoHPC got Primes right away is because most of us are both "early adopters" of technology in general, and fans of HP calculators specifically. That's why I had an HP 48 version "A", and a beta 50g, neither of which had the "finished quality" you see in your 48 and 50. What does the VERSION command return on your 48G? "R"? Aha! See what I mean?

It may now be true that the MoHPC members comprise the majority of HP's calculator customers. In the old days, many people from a huge array of fields sought them out because they offered functionality that other calculators did not. Let's be honest here - HP's competition is not TI and their textbook aid market. It's Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab that HP needs to target and beat with better usability and features. People who already have a working, stable, mature CAS on their phone won't likely accept a beta product in a new hardware platform unless it's better.

Of the people here who bought a 67, 41/42, or 48 series machine - did they buy them because they wanted to be early adopters? Or did they buy them primarily because the tool was useful for their daily work? I realize that HP is taking a stab at the school calculator market - it is huge - but to make any inroads there would take a miracle. Meanwhile the RPN-trained professional engineering, surveying, and general sciences market doesn't even have a feature-complete RPN mode.

A beta quality student school calculator might be just the thing if you're a calculator enthusiast but I'm not sure that this can be a bread and butter market for HP. In any event, again I'm not trying to lay the blame for what is ultimately, a poor business decision, at the feet of the Prime's developers. They did not make the call to release the product before it was ready. And I'm not ruling out the possibility of buying one myself some day either, but as you say it might be a decade before it's done "enough" to consider for my needs.

One final thought I have, though - HP used to be a company that had a reputation for making the highest quality products one could buy. While the 48 series had bugs, it was also so far above and beyond the competition that they seemed minor in comparison. The HP-48, in all its incarnations (including the 49 and 50 in my opinion), is a legendary product and people actually love those gadgets. It'd be great to see that standard of quality again and it would be great for both business and corporate pride. A superb quality pocket calculator with real buttons running a world class CAS, with RPN for the millions of people still holding onto their 48s and 49s and 50s for dear life would sell like hotcakes, but the Prime isn't it (yet?).

In any event don't be too hard on me. I'm only telling it like I see it, and while I'm relatively new to HP's calculator products I do have perspective on this issue from a number of angles.

I agree about the evils of compartmentalization - for HP it started with the 38G, a truly abysmal product & has limped on in the 39G,40g, 39gs, 40gs, 39g+, 39gii & behold the Prime.

The elegant simplicity of assembling all components in one place, as in a shipyard, reconciles me to the defects of the 50G.