Keynote - A solid presentation application
Sep 29, '03 10:47:00AM
Contributed by: robg
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 7 out of 10]
This weekend, based on a comment in the current poll, I spent some time playing with Keynote. I wanted to graph the responses based on year, and figured playing with Keynote was a good way to do it. I really hadn't spent much time with the application since its launch, and I came away mostly impressed. The final result of an hour or so fiddling with Keynote can be seen in this graph [119K] of Apple operating system usage over time (and OS versions).
On the good side, the graphing functions are easy to use, the templates are beautiful, and it's amazingly easy to make great looking graphs and presentations. I understood Keynote's "master" metaphor quite easily, though if you have tons of PowerPoint hours, it might require a bit of a learning period. I also liked the easy to understand building (animation) functions, coupled with the output to QuickTime. I actually created a QT movie of the graph I made, but it's a relatively boring chart to see in motion, so I didn't bother to upload it. The ability to scale, rotate, and add transparency to objects, and the use of OpenGL transitions makes it very easy to put graphics to good use in your presentations.
On the down side, the program is still a bit pokey (even with the 1.1 update) on my G4/733. Even worse are the limitations on the export options. I wanted to create a JPEG of the graph I'd created, but the only export options are QuickTime movie, PowerPoint presentation, and PDF. PDF works, but it loses some subtle elements, such as the shadows behind the columnar bars in my final graph. I ended up taking a screenshot and then editing that in Photoshop; a "Save slide as JPEG / PNG / whatever" option would be very useful.
Overall, for $99.00, Keynote is a very solid presentation tool that beats PowerPoints in many areas (and falls short in others), but has no peers in terms of beauty of provided templates ... which may not turn you into the next Steve Jobs, but at least you'll have great looking slides!
Comments (10)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=200309290707358