“PowerPoint doesn’t annoy me as much as Celine Dion or that loathsome substance known as tomato soup, but it comes close.”
“When a visiting tech-product purveyor pulls out a laptop and offers to run through an electronic slide show using the Microsoft presentation software, I paste a wan grin on my face while inwardly shrieking. (Sometimes I’ll say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to much fumbling and consternation from the would-be presenters.)”
“So I’ve often marveled that public presentations by Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs are so easy to sit through even though they can last upward of two hours. Sure, it’s partly due to Jobs’ phenomenal speaking skills. And, yes, it helps to like all things Macintosh.”
“But, gosh, I also dig Jobs’ trademark big-screen visual aids. So clean. So elegant.”
“As it turns out, Jobs didn’t use PowerPoint (sorry, Bill) or any other publicly available presentation program during his last few Mac trade-show keynote addresses, but internal software not accessible to ordinary mortals.”
“Well, now a form of it is, Jobs says. It’s called Keynote, and it’s the anti-PowerPoint in some ways.”
“A disclaimer: Apple’s new presentationware will not turn you into a Steve Jobs. That would require divine intervention or genetic manipulation. Jobs is in rarified public-speaker company, right up there with Ronald Reagan, Il Duce and Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy.”
“But if you use a recent-model Macintosh and need elegant, easy-to-use presentation software that won’t break the bank, take heed,” writes Julio Ojeda-Zapata in his article “Keynote: Be like Steve,” for Pioneer Press. Full article here.
