British software
developer Stephen Wolfram received uncounted interest over the past few months
for the continued success of his innovative computational knowledge engine
known as Wolfram Alpha. For beginners, the web service has been broadly
accepted by a large pool of education and research populations around the globe
for its ability to predict, assume and compute real-world natural language
input into specific and intelligible answer representations.
Unfortunately, the engineers behind the decision to release the
engine to the iPhone crowd may have opened up an interesting pricing debate.
The app was just released to the iTunes Store yesterday at $49.99, which may or
may not have reasonable value to various consumers depending on several
interpersonal opinions. Some analysts have suggested that the company is
targeting its app at students and professionals with a marketing vibe
determined on serving as a graphing calculator replacement.
"Drawing on 20+ years of
development, 50,000+ built-in algorithms, and 10+ trillion pieces of
continually updated and curated data, the Wolfram Alpha app is the ultimate
replacement for almost any kind of calculator or reference book - and much more",
says Wolfram Alpha.
It is important to note that the application is only usable
when connected to the internet. The engine requires a two-way interaction with
its core knowledge databases to supply all of its geographical statistics,
nutritional data, financial data, calculus expression data, and any other forms
of useful data of which consumers are willing to seek inquiry. This might come
off as a deal breaker to some students, considering that many schools have
spotty EDGE (2.5G) service while some only manage Wi-Fi signals that are either
restricted or protected with security encryption standards. Even so, the app
would not be plausible as a graphing calculator replacement for a large majority
of iPod Touch owners.
More
here.