“See, we’re a Mac-based company, so we’re not stuck with PowerPoint. And over the years, we’ve used a variety of presentation programs ranging from AppleWorks to OpenOffice. And in the last three years, we’ve been using Apple’s Keynote software, which is bundled as part of its iWork package
. And quite honestly, it puts PowerPoint to shame,” Blackfriars Communications’ Carl Howe writes for Seeking Alpha.
Howe writes, “Why do I say this? Because I did hundreds of presentations using PowerPoint as an analyst and always dreaded the experience of creating the slides. And Keynote removes that dread and makes us look better because it:”
• Renders slides for maximum impact
• Makes it easy to do common things
• Avoids needless clutter
• Helps presenters present well
Howe writes, “We’re not the first people to observe the Keynote effect. Les Posen at Cyberpsych has a terrific blog article titled, “Just what is it about Keynote
that is changing the way people present?” where he cites a number of famous presenters who have been won over to Keynote
because it allows them to be more creative. And of course, Al Gore did the visuals for his groundbreaking film, “An Inconvenient Truth” in Keynote
. And Garr Reynolds at the site PresentationZen.com notes how the Zen esthetic embodied in Keynote
allows Steve Jobs’ presentations to have much more power and impact than similar presentations by Bill Gates.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Want to know how to wow ’em? Easy, use Apple’s Keynote and not PowerPoint. Chances are that most of the room hasn’t seen a Keynote presentation
and just by breaking out of the PowerPoint rut, you’ll perk up more than few pairs of tired eyes. More info about Apple’s Keynote application here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Grab the room’s attention by using Apple’s Keynote and dumping Microsoft’s PowerPoint – April 12, 2006
Apple’s Keynote makes better-looking presentations than Microsoft’s PowerPoint – December 06, 2004
Clean elegant Keynote: ‘the anti-PowerPoint’ – March 10, 2003
Keynote cleaner and better organized than PowerPoint – February 18, 2003
Bill Gates on Apple’s ‘Keynote’ app: ‘I doubt what they’ve done is as rich as PowerPoint’ – January 09, 2003
I LOATHE Powerpoint. However, when I attempted to use Keynote this past summer I found I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do with animations. The animations appeared quite primitive. I would LOVE to be told that I am missing some amazing Keynote animation power etc, but…
quadrupole, I think this is part of keeping it simple. We don’t want our presentations looking like Borat’s MySpace page.
quadropole, what kind of animations were you trying to do that you couldn’t do in Keynote?
Specifics would be nice, because my Keynote experience has been the exact opposite of yours.
Do you mean those fancy *.gifs and stuff or animation between slides. The latter you must have overlooked. For the first part: Can’t stand them, after 5 seconds of something running wild I get a headache…
That PresentationZen.com link in the article is pretty good, too.
http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_zen_estheti.html
I like that nobody in the ‘corporate’ world knows about this…with little effort, I can look like a rock star every time I present. It’s like shaking a rattle in front of a baby…except the baby is more intuitive.
If you don’t need to share presentations Keynote works but the whole world is on Powerpoint. If you have a complex presentation to share with trade show organizers (a lot of them only use powerpoint) or people that work at large corporations you will run into problems.
I bought Keynote shortly after v1 came out. After half an hour of experimenting, I declared: “Never again will I use Powerpoint.” Since then I have used Keynote exclusively in numerous academic presentations. The enhanced audience response is very apparent, and compliments are clearly more genuine.
It is not that Powerpoint does not work. It helps you make mechanical presentations, at some substantial cost in effort. Keynote helps you make personalized, effective presentations, also with effort, but with enjoyable effort, and much less effort. Results are livelier, not mechanical.
Do you think apple will ever add a spreadsheet and word proccesor, so we can kiss MS office good bye??
JEG:
Keynote will acutally export presentations in a Power Point format, although you may lose some pizazz in the process
You can also export to Flash and while some elements don’t survive the transition many do…. I suspect this will continue to improve with certain character effects and combination builds making it to Flash. It works very well…Powerpoint, as a slide show, works well enough but in terms of editing ease and the sheer power of making more visually interesting and compelling shows…FAR more easily it can’t compare to Keynote.
Keynote also exports to DVD, QuickTime, HTML, PDF, and PNG, in addition to exporting to PowerPoint (although tommyMac is right, you lose ALOT of pizzaz)
Yes, I much prefer Keynote to Powerpoint, but if you have to do a presentation that will be shared with Powerpoint users, you have to test Keynote export in Powerpoint because it will be different unless you are doing something at the most basic level.
So, I really hate to say this, but if I am going to do a presentation that I know will be played by mostly Powerpoint user, I just do it in PPT, rather than have to check every single thing anyway.
Is sad that I have do dumb down my presentation so it will work in PPT, but I can’t blame Apple for that.
In June of 2007, my company will be introducing an enterprise presentation application that will put both to shame. I still use Keynote for basic presentations and it’s a great tool. But man, do we ever have a fun, never-seen-before presentation software app entering its final stages of development. And there have been a lot of sleepless nights getting this thing off the ground….
I’ll be sure to send our official press release to MDN when it’s released. Stay tuned.
Jeremy Richter
http://www.richterbrothers.com
If Al Gore is using Keynote to do his scaremongering, then I think I will just stick to PPT.
I still can’t fathom why that lying p-o-s Al Gore is on Apple’s BOD…
I use imovie to make presentations (when presenter is not need it) and I fell very shame for those who used PowerPoint because Audio never sync with the video, some slides goes slower that other ones, Computers crash, Graphics are very poor, Most of the time, Power Point users only presents text of poor microsoft’s clip art. It takes me less time to insert pictures and text in a iMovie file, make it look great and insert a lot of animations for the graphics and text. smd it id perfect to sync audio files of music or narrations in a iMovie file (that you can also put it in keynote.
What I wanted to do was pretty conceptually simple.
I wanted to start with a simple mono-color horizontal bar:
1) Add a label
2) Transition into seperating the bar pieces by percentage (with different colors, and different labels).
3) Rinse repeat.
I also wanted to at some point bring in a second bar, align it with the first,
and run it through the same sort of breakdown.
Think of it as a way to take a thing and run a simple visual representation of
it’s breakdown into parts.
I manage media for a large church in Florida and after trying many alternatives have found Keynote to be awesome for all our presentations. The transitions are beautiful, the text crisp, and there are all kinds of creative tricks available if you spend some time getting to know it. Not a week goes by that I do not get very positive comments on our presentations.
Greg Davis
http://writeclik.com
Does anyone remember that PowerPoint presentation Microsoft did to demonstrate all the elements of Windows Live? It’s looked like an explosion in a crayon factory, it was so pathetic!
Cut across to our Steve, black environment, minimal information in each slide to maximise impact. You can’t buy class.
I agree with MDN, we (marketing department) did a presentation in Keynote and talked the Director to use it for a meeting with the board. If you think people can’t tell one presentation to the next you are wrong. Everyone was asking for a PowerPoint template of what they just saw, how did you do it kind of thing. They were very impressed.
1. They never knew Keynote existed.
2. They never knew there was anything other than PowerPoint.
3. The Marketing director never did it again be cause I frikken T won’t let him have a Mac and he has to be able to do his presentations himself.
So it doesn’t matter if PowerPoint is one of the worst products M$ offers, because of 1,2 and 3. M$ keeps mailing it in. Everyone does what IT says and they’ll use whatever is put in front of them first.
Also I am glad to see a positive story on Keynote. Many times I have heard people say it doesn’t even compare to PowerPoint. I NEVER understood this, I have always liked Keynote and PowerPoint is one of the most frustrating, unorganized P’sOS I have ever seen (Next to Lotus Notes).
Keynote is brilliant.
I’ve migrated to Keynote right after v.2 came out, and I never looked back. Now, with v.3, it can take care of all my needs (university level lectures, seminar talks, but also preparing QT movies for teaching).
It’s also a great excuse not to use the POS Dell laptop the hosts usually provide for presentations.
“We need a .ppt file from every speaker three days in advance for our IT staff to integrate into the program.”
Like I know what I’ll talk about and how three days in advance!
“Sorry, no can do. Just give me the VGA plug and I’ll go from there!”
So far, they all knuckled under after some grumping. The result: my intellectual property does not float around on dozens of virus infested laptops, and I can adapt my presentation to the audience right up to the last minute.
Keynote is classier, easier, and cheaper than PowerPoint.
We use it but run into problems when asked to create one for other departments who’s IT people are PC loyalists drive what computer those clueless users buy and what program gets used.
You have to have your own Mac, then if you must leave copies with these PC dufus folks, export it as a clickable Quick Time Movie.
I’m using keynote in every single one of my current presentations, and averyone always seem a bit still afterwards…
Even the teachers are impresed with it. But since everyone else in my class use Windows Based PC’s, they aren’t to happy with them selves not being able to use it ;D I suppose that’s why they are still…
The problem is not presentation software but presentations.
A good presenter should barely need Powerpoint, should barely need Keynote, should barely need need anything.
The most impressive thing about Jobs’ presentations is how few slides he uses (and half of those he doesn’t really need), plus how simple they are.
All these backgrounds and animations and transitions and bullets and build ups that are in Powerpoint (and Keynote) are all just crutches for the presenter.
“Here I am saying something; here I am showing you the same thing, and just in case you haven’t got it, I’ll read it out from the slide and isn’t it clever I have got our logo on every slide and look I’ve got it to spin round!!”
The only way to improve presentations is to do away with presentation software.
1. Use pdf
2. maximum 7 pages of type however long the presentation (pictures are ok -“i’m discusing this new car – and this is what it looks like”)
3. Maximum 5 words per page
4. single muted colour background and white type
5. pages come up with no fuss – no transitions of any kind
6. Delete Powerpoint and Keynote and never use either again
Objectively, Keynote’s over look and feel easily out-does PPT.
However, there is one thing that I’m amazed is not available in KN, that is in PPT. The ability to see moving video on the presenter’s screen simultaneously with the presentation screen. On the presenter’s screen I need to be able to see, not just the runtime of the video currently being displayed, but the actual video so that my astronomy presentations can flow more like I’ve rehearsed them. Without this basic capability KN becomes almost unuseable, which is upsetting because KN output quality is significantly better than PPT.
This singular functionality would take PPT completely out of my life once and for all, and, just seems too obvious to have been overlooked – but it was.
Re powerpoint vs keynote: keynote is slick and the slide backgrounds, etc, look better. Frankly, though, if you are selling your presentation on the basis of whether the background or the fonts look better there must be something wrong with your ideas. As a veteran powerpoint wizard, and dabbler in keynote, lately I’ve been doing something remarkable: speaking without slides. Generally that means I interact more with the audience, speak for a shorter period of time (less time for BS visuals), etc.
Not for every situation, but worth considering.
—
And a note re the “Al Gore hater” up above: I’m just curious if, while being repelled by our ex-VP because of his unspecified “lying”, you support the pack-o-lies administration of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Powell-et-al who brought us disappearing WMD and a nonexistent link between Saddam and al-Qaeda? And thousands of limbless veterans?
I’ve created a few Keynote presentations for customers.
Keynote has it flaws that i hope will be fixed, but overall each and every one of the companies got rave reviews and compliments for their presentations.
And i am now receiving phone calls to do more.
If only they knew how easy it is.
The main thing that Keynote lacks in terms of animation is paths and emphasis. They have enter/exit modes that are great, but not so much for actual animation.
Still, I prefer Keynote because it handles video/graphics so much better, shadows are easy and don’t look like crap, and the export to Quicktime is fantastic. I recently used Keynote to produce our booth video for a trade show. It was 1920×1200 and ran beautifully on Windows, and was a lot simpler than using a video editor, because of its excellent support for text, transitions, and videos.
Note to Bush hater above:
Maybe it’s just that everyone KNOWS that liberal Democrats are liars and that their multitude of statements about Saddam’s WMDs were just cynical political posturing and to be expected. Meanwhile, no one expected a Republican president to lie so we were all surprised.
But the record is clear and unambiguous. Either:
a.) Saddam’s WMD arsenal WAS a threat and Bush was right to go after him
or
b.) Hillary, Bill, Al Gore, Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, et.al. were/are all liars of the first order and Bush should have ignored those lies instead of acting on them.
Here is just a sampling of evidence to prove my point:
“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.” — President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.” — Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb 18, 1998
“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” — Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country… Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” — Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”— Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
“It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein wiill continue to increase his capability to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”</i>
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
“With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? … Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents?”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), October 9, 2002
There are hundreds of other examples of similar quotes from Democrats over the years. A simple Google search is all it takes to find them.
I recently found a very interesting website:
http://alreadylinked.com/
There you can purchase ad space for your Blog etc.
I admit that Apple’s Keynote produces arguable the most stylish and amazing looking presentations. However, I’m still using Microsoft Powerpoint, because it’s a multiplatform applicatin that is the industry standard and from my experience offers wider range of features.