Texas Instruments removed support for sideloaded apps and games

[Deleted User]

Texas Instruments removed support for C-based and Assembly based programms.
The latest firmware for both the TI-84 Plus CE and the TI-83 Premium CE, its French sibling removed the ability to run program written in ASM or C on any CE operating on the newest TI OS 5.5.1 or higher.
A video surfaced online where a teacher and his student showed the exact steps to bypass a Test Mode restriction in OS 5.2.2, an obsolete, 3 year old OS.

Texas Instruments decided they'd need to take some drastic measures to uphold their Exam Mode security reputation.
“After careful consideration,” the company states, “we made the decision to remove [the programming] functionality in our latest operating system update to prioritize learning and minimize security risks.”

This caused an uproar in the coding scene. They now try to give Texas Instruments enough negative backlash to consider negotiating better terms with the community.
“As a hobbyist this is extremely disappointing to hear and will only discourage learning. I for one would not have even gotten into C or gotten excited about it if it weren’t for programming on the CE.”

Source:
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/texas-instruments-removes-support-for-popular-side-loaded-apps
https://linustechtips.com/main/topi...-programs-games-on-ti-84-plus-ce-calculators/

 

[bobmcjr]

Texas Instruments removed support for C-based and Assembly based programms.
The latest firmware for both the TI-84 Plus CE and the TI-83 Premium CE, its French sibling removed the ability to run program written in ASM or C on any CE operating on the newest TI OS 5.5.1 or higher.
A video surfaced online where a teacher and his student showed the exact steps to bypass a Test Mode restriction in OS 5.2.2, an obsolete, 3 year old OS.

Texas Instruments decided they'd need to take some drastic measures to uphold their Exam Mode security reputation.
“After careful consideration,” the company states, “we made the decision to remove [the programming] functionality in our latest operating system update to prioritize learning and minimize security risks.”

This caused an uproar in the coding scene. They now try to give Texas Instruments enough negative backlash to consider negotiating better terms with the community.
“As a hobbyist this is extremely disappointing to hear and will only discourage learning. I for one would not have even gotten into C or gotten excited about it if it weren’t for programming on the CE.”

Source:
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/texas-instruments-removes-support-for-popular-side-loaded-apps
https://linustechtips.com/main/topi...-programs-games-on-ti-84-plus-ce-calculators/

TI is awfully Apple-like about their calculator line. The fact that you have to exploit/jailbreak the TI Nspire line to run anything fast is absurd.

Ah yes, "prioritizing learning". Prioritizing common core tedium instead of useful skills like C/assembly programming.

In some ways I hope people start hard-modding their calculators to bypass "Test Mode". Any situation that takes "Test Mode" that seriously shouldn't even allow calculators, or only allow use of test-issued ones.

 

[FAST6191]

Missed the whole TI thing and only heard about it after the fact really.

That said for them to remove programming options at all is a fairly radical step.

Do people really need programmable calculators though in the exams? Scientific calculator (trig, equations, stats) sure but anything I might have needed to play with graphs or iteration for would surely be done on a spreadsheet type setup on a full fat PC.

 

[64bitmodels]

ah shit, looks like ti is taking inspiration from nintendo

 

[tech3475]

I remember wanting one back in the day BECAUSE it could be made to sideload.

ah shit, looks like ti is taking inspiration from nintendo

Except Nintendo never allowed it, closer comparison would be Sony who took Other OS from the PS3 due to an exploit.

 

[64bitmodels]

I remember wanting one back in the day BECAUSE it could be made to sideload.



Except Nintendo never allowed it, closer comparison would be Sony who took Other OS from the PS3 due to an exploit.

nintendo is way more egregious in that regard, otheros was just one feature. wii u, ds, 3ds and wii had amazing media functionality not seen before, netfix, youtube, hulu, crunchyroll, internet browser, miiverse, wiiconnect24, flipnote hatena, swapnote, and all your classic (virtual console) and modern games all inside 1 little box. it wasnt just a gaming console, it was a media console that could do anything.
and then switch came along and stripped all that functionality away because a few of them could cause exploits, which is what, 1 con in the large list of pros having all these services and features have. now you can only play games on the switch and watch youtube
and hulu too i guess. nothing more than that though, internet browser is limited to announcements and signing in to twitter/facebook, and the switch doesnt even have 1% of the amazing and fun online services previous online consoles had
in my book that's way worse than sony simply removing otheros

 

[GerbilSoft]

nintendo is way more egregious in that regard, otheros was just one feature. wii u, ds, 3ds and wii had amazing media functionality not seen before, netfix, youtube, hulu, internet browser, miiverse, wiiconnect24, dvd player, flipnote hatena, swapnote all inside 1 little box. it wasnt just a gaming console, it was a media console that could do anything.
and then switch came along and stripped all that functionality away because a few of them could cause exploits, which is what, 1 con in the large list of pros having all these services and features have. now you can only play games on the switch and watch youtube
and hulu too i guess. nothing more than that though, internet browser is limited to announcements and signing in to twitter/facebook, and the switch doesnt even have 1% of the amazing and fun online services previous online consoles had
in my book that's way worse than sony simply removing otheros

Hulu is available for Switch. Other video players haven't been added because the companies in question haven't bothered to port their titles to Switch.

DVD playback functionality was never officially available on any Nintendo platform (aside from the Panasonic Q, which had a limited run and was only available in Japan).

 

[64bitmodels]

Hulu is available for Switch. Other video players haven't been added because the companies in question haven't bothered to port their titles to Switch.

DVD playback functionality was never officially available on any Nintendo platform (aside from the Panasonic Q, which had a limited run and was only available in Japan).

crap, i made an oopsie
i thought the wii had dvd player support since it used a dvd drive and not the proprietary one from the wii u

 

[GerbilSoft]

crap, i made an oopsie
i thought the wii had dvd player support since it used a dvd drive and not the proprietary one from the wii u

Wii U's drive is a modified Blu-ray drive, much like Wii's is modified DVD. Technically, the Wii drive *can* read DVD-ROM discs (prior to D3-2 drivechips), but Nintendo never released a DVD player channel. (They were going to release it originally, but cancelled it for unspecified reasons.)

 

[tech3475]

nintendo is way more egregious in that regard, otheros was just one feature. wii u, ds, 3ds and wii had amazing media functionality not seen before, netfix, youtube, hulu, internet browser, miiverse, wiiconnect24, dvd player, flipnote hatena, swapnote all inside 1 little box. it wasnt just a gaming console, it was a media console that could do anything.
and then switch came along and stripped all that functionality away because a few of them could cause exploits, which is what, 1 con in the large list of pros having all these services and features have. now you can only play games on the switch and watch youtube
and hulu too i guess. nothing more than that though, internet browser is limited to announcements and signing in to twitter/facebook, and the switch doesnt even have 1% of the amazing and fun online services previous online consoles had
in my book that's way worse than sony simply removing otheros

I still think OOS's removal was worse since that was an official feature removed via a software update which may have been one of the reasons why someone bought one.

The Switch was an entirely new platform which while I agree is underutilised from a multimedia perspective (seriously if they added Amazon Prime, Netflix and a USB/DLNA capable media player I would have my AIO system when on holiday), but at least the Switch was an entirely new platform and they hadn't taken a way a reason why people may have bought one.

If a major (negative) change is going to occur, I'd rather it happen with a new hardware/platform than to remove it from something you already own/use, like it may be in the case of these TI calculators.

 

[FamicomHeero]

This seems a bit silly. I remember playing all kinds of games on the old TI calculators. It's been a big part of their calculators for a while. Hopefully they reconsider.