- 2003.11.06
I recently sprung for a copy of Keynote at my local Apple
Store (US$99 retail, $79 education-online only) and found that it has
compelling features that make it a great alternative to Microsoft
PowerPoint. It certainly provides the best looking presentations, in
terms of the finished product, on any computer platform. Unfortunately,
these features are probably not enough to compensate for basic
functions that are missing or to justify the price unless you're a
professional presenter.
The system requirements for Keynote start at OS X 10.2, so older Mac
users still running OS 9 are out of luck.
The features in the transitions are such that I doubt they would be
adaptable to OS 9 anyway. I think Apple might be better served
providing the program in a limited way for OS 9 users, with all
the transition effect OS 9 can't support grayed out. That way
OS 9 users get a nice presentation program, OS 9 users are
nudged toward OS X, Apple makes more money in a wider audience,
and everyone wins.
Keynote has some hints of characteristics inherited from the
primitive slide show feature found in AppleWorks 6, such as the fact
that it defaults to slide-based editing when you first open it, and has
few (if any) options available for playing your presentation. In fact,
AppleWorks has more options for how the show is presented (timed
automatic delays for kiosk mode) than Keynote, so there are some
serious deficiencies here.
Seeing as how the slide presentation function in AppleWorks is crude
and clumsy, even in comparison to PowerPoint, some users are going to
find that Keynote just isn't going to cut it.
If you put in every function every user wants, you'll wind up with a
Microsoft product. That's called "providing options" in press releases*
and "feature bloat" in reviews. I'm not talking feature bloat here. I'm
talking basic functionality that's been available in products like
Astound! since the early 1990s.
- *For example, this is Microsoft's criticism of iTunes: It doesn't
"provide options" for users to use crappy MP3 players.
The slide building interface continues the object-oriented
"inspector-based" theme I first encountered in Freehand years ago. A
user will have to click on the "Text" button to add a text object to
the screen, then click on "Fonts" (which also has a capital A as an
icon, a poor user interface choice if you ask me) to change the
characteristics of the text you've just typed. You must then click a
third time on "inspector" (which has the informative "i" as an icon -
next time try a microscope) in order to change such things as the
kerning of the words or the spacing of lines in a block of text.
This feels clumsy and counterintuitive. On the other hand, it's no
worse than PowerPoint, which has become exponentially more difficult to
use with age.
Another feature I find particularly useful that is missing from
Keynote is scatterplot graphs in the graphing function. Obviously there
were no science majors present for the development of the graphing
module; only business-types, social scientists, and USA Today use bar
charts and line plots where one axis is categories instead of values.
It disturbs me vaguely that this was originally Steve Jobs' personal
software and that's the only kind of graph he ever talks about. This
function is effectively useless for physical science students, and I
won't deploy Keynote in student machines until it is added in.
Welcome changes from the old AppleWorks presenter include a
functional outline mode, master slides that can be applied to all or a
portion of a presentation, and the ability to directly edit bullet
point graphics. This is a whole new product, after all, not a new
version of an old one, and Keynote shines in two areas especially - the
appearance of content on the screen and transitions.
Text now appears smooth, unlike the jagged effects you get in
PowerPoint if you pick the wrong font. Inserted content such as photos
and graphs can be emphasized with a beautiful shadowing effect that
looks like it was done externally to the program by high-powered
graphics software and imported (which would be required in PowerPoint,
I think). Resizing works in a simple, reasonable way, and you can
adjust your text several ways to fit into the available space.
Longtime PowerPoint users will complain about the lack of choices in
transitions and the fact that sounds are not available to assign to
clicking events, builds, and transitions. I say good riddance. The only
people who use the sound effects are middle school students;
professionals don't use them as far as I have seen because they
distract from the message.
Also, just because you can do a transition doesn't mean it looks
good. There are even some in Keynote that I think are superfluous, but
you've got to draw the line somewhere, right?
It seems inconsistent for me to complain of some missing features
and not mind others, but all reviews are judgment calls anyway. Reviews
are just opinions, I have mine, and that's it.
The transitions that are included with the program include the
popular Cube Rotation transition that I understand is used in Panther's
fast user switching function. It looks great and even elicited some
gasps from my student audience that has been using PowerPoint in
schools for years. All the transitions I tested on a 1 GHz TiBook (the
slowest PowerBook available today runs at 1 GHz, so my TiBook is
now officially "low end" - can you believe it?) were smooth. They
include a subtle acceleration effect never seen in PowerPoint that
makes the transition start slowly, accelerate to its maximum speed, and
then slow down just before ending. No one has mentioned this in any
review I've seen, it's subtle, and it looks fantastic.
I found the appearance of the presentation so compelling that I felt
as if the purchase price was justified. For other users, I'm not so
sure the price point is set correctly. I think a retail price of about
$50 would be more appropriate, especially considering the effect of
market penetration on the large groups that will see the final
presentations. But I'm not privy to the development costs Apple is
trying to recover, and you got to pay the bills. Perhaps when the
product's ROI is sufficient to justify it they can drop the price a
bit. In it's present state, it's worth a look but not going to displace
PowerPoint overnight.
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
