After prepping an important presentation for a client in PowerPoint, I came to the realization that it just wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be. PowerPoint is just too limiting and too low quality in everything it does.
So I went out on a limb and proposed having the client let me redo it in Keynote and they could just use my iBook to present it. Once I showed them a couple of transitions in Keynote, their decision was easy. They let me do it.
The Good:
Keynote's transitions and animations are glass. So smooth and silky, they destroy PowerPoint at its best.
Imports Photoshop and Illustrator files complete with transparency and vector info. Wow! I was able to do some gorgeous layouts thanks to this.
I really like how Keynote is organized for editing. The sidebar panel of thumbs is great. Same for the inspector pallette. You can get to where you want far easier than PPT.
You can animate multiple elements at the same time without grouping them. Nice!
Very easy method of using Master pages.
The selection of objects is how is should be, unlike PPT. If you marquee select some objects, you only have to marquee a portion of the object to select it. In PPT, you have to select the whole dang thing. Very annoying. Also, in Keynote slecting an individual object is a lot easier than PPT, which does this annoying thing on text boxes where you have to select it twice in effect.
True transparency. Nuff said.
You can select multiple objects and change all of their heights, for example, in the inspector. So if you have a bunch of shapes that you want to be 35 pixels tall, no prob. You can force it to maintain propotions, too. Nice.
Smart guides, so you can quickly tell when objects are aligned. Love it.
The Bad:
You can't resize a group of objects. This is very bad! If you need to resize a group, you have to break it apart and resize the pieces individually. Argh!
End file sizes can be larger than PowerPoint equivalents. (But who cares, they're so much better!)
You can't change fonts with the Text inspector, which seems odd. You have to bring up the separate Show Fonts menu. Kind of kills the point of the text inspector, which would be a lot easier.
Summary:
Keynote may not be able to do quite as much as PPT, but it does what it does so much better, that 90% of the time you won't care.
I'd like to see them add slightly more ambitious animation options (like following a path for example).
Also, Apple should really consider making some kind of Keynote player for Windows (and I don't mean just using Quicktime).
In short, Keynote is WAY better than PowerPoint for making nice looking presentations. In and of itself, Keynote is very good with room for improvement. I was able to work about five times faster in Keynote than PPT once I got the hang of it.
So I went out on a limb and proposed having the client let me redo it in Keynote and they could just use my iBook to present it. Once I showed them a couple of transitions in Keynote, their decision was easy. They let me do it.
The Good:
Keynote's transitions and animations are glass. So smooth and silky, they destroy PowerPoint at its best.
Imports Photoshop and Illustrator files complete with transparency and vector info. Wow! I was able to do some gorgeous layouts thanks to this.
I really like how Keynote is organized for editing. The sidebar panel of thumbs is great. Same for the inspector pallette. You can get to where you want far easier than PPT.
You can animate multiple elements at the same time without grouping them. Nice!
Very easy method of using Master pages.
The selection of objects is how is should be, unlike PPT. If you marquee select some objects, you only have to marquee a portion of the object to select it. In PPT, you have to select the whole dang thing. Very annoying. Also, in Keynote slecting an individual object is a lot easier than PPT, which does this annoying thing on text boxes where you have to select it twice in effect.
True transparency. Nuff said.
You can select multiple objects and change all of their heights, for example, in the inspector. So if you have a bunch of shapes that you want to be 35 pixels tall, no prob. You can force it to maintain propotions, too. Nice.
Smart guides, so you can quickly tell when objects are aligned. Love it.
The Bad:
You can't resize a group of objects. This is very bad! If you need to resize a group, you have to break it apart and resize the pieces individually. Argh!
End file sizes can be larger than PowerPoint equivalents. (But who cares, they're so much better!)
You can't change fonts with the Text inspector, which seems odd. You have to bring up the separate Show Fonts menu. Kind of kills the point of the text inspector, which would be a lot easier.
Summary:
Keynote may not be able to do quite as much as PPT, but it does what it does so much better, that 90% of the time you won't care.
I'd like to see them add slightly more ambitious animation options (like following a path for example).
Also, Apple should really consider making some kind of Keynote player for Windows (and I don't mean just using Quicktime).
In short, Keynote is WAY better than PowerPoint for making nice looking presentations. In and of itself, Keynote is very good with room for improvement. I was able to work about five times faster in Keynote than PPT once I got the hang of it.
