Alright kids, if you just can't wait for me to return to active publishing duty on Monday, then perhaps you'll enjoy this old Keynote review of mine, published back in March of 2003, which was the first full-length article ever published on this site. It's a little outdated by now, but it gives you the general idea of why I fell in love with Keynote, and why I still use it every day. I'll have a lot more to say about Keynote in the coming days, but in the mean time, enjoy this blast from the past:
Bill Palmer's Keynote Review (originally published Monday, March 10, 2003)
When choosing which software application you want to hit the trail with, you’re usually faced with the same scenario: you can go with the quick-to-use app that’s so limited and simplistic that it can’t fully do the job, or you can opt for the laborious app that’s so complicated it can turn even the simplest job into an all-nighter. In the arena of slide show presentations, the scenario is as true as anywhere else. AppleWorks 6.2 has a module called "Presentation" that I often use to crank out a quick-and-dirty slide show when I don't care how basic things look. It’s great for those last minute slide shows that you didn't think you were going to need to make -- or the ones you wish you didn't have to. PowerPoint, the de facto "standard" for slide show presentations in the corporate world, has long been my tool of choice when I want to create a decent-looking, decently complicated slide show. But PowerPoint’s developers seem to live by the theory that the more important a feature, the more deeply it should buried in a sea of menus and bizarre-looking icons (or should I have just intuitively known that if I wanted to animate a slide, I should click on a yellow star?).. But I’ve always been grateful for the very existence of PowerPoint because there’s never been anything else quite like it.
Until January 7, 2003, that is.
I always knew that Apple would eventually release a product that went head-to-head with one of the three key apps in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), but I never expected Apple to start off by going after the strongest of the three. Apple must have felt that it could make the clearest innovations in the presentation field, even if it meant competing with the truly decent PowerPoint. Outclassing MS Word would have taken all the effort of lifting a finger in zero-gravity, but I suppose there’s only so much that even an innovator like Apple can do for word processing. Rumor has it that Apple first tried to offer most of Keynote’s innovations to Microsoft for use in the next version of PowerPoint, only to be turned down, Microsoft knowing that it would never be able to replicate the Mac functionality on the PC side. There’s no reason to assume any truth in such a rumor, but it does make sense. Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit likes to brag about the minor features that you can only find on the Mac side of PowerPoint (mostly related to QuickTime integration), but Microsoft would be loathe to embarrass its Windows operating system by making the Mac version of PowerPoint that much better than the Windows version.
Regardless of what really went on behind closed doors, the end result was that two months ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the midsection of his MacWorld Expo Keynote Address to unveil Keynote to the public. The fact that Keynote the software was unveiled during a keynote speech is no accident: Steve had been using Keynote for his background slides all morning, and for that matter, for every keynote speech he’s given in the past year. After seeing Keynote’s first few features, my only thought was "I must have this, and I hope it’s a free download". After seeing the rest of the demonstration, my evolved line of thinking was "I must have this at any cost." So the $99 price tag seemed cheap. Apple has spoiled its users in recent years by giving us gems such as iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and iCal at no cost, but I guess from time to time we actually have to pay for Apple’s innovations. Fair enough.
Right up front, this is what Keynote can not do: slides can not automatically advance without a click, and a continuous music soundtrack cannot play across multiple slides, among other things. But here’s what it can do: it can make your presentation look so slick, so impressive, that your audience will forget what you’ve presented, and instead pepper you with questions about what you’ve presented with. I used Keynote to demonstrate slides of a host of new software titles to my colleagues, and when I asked which title they wanted to spend hands-on time with, they chose Keynote. Not exactly what I had intended, but when you’re promoting technology in the education field, you gladly take success from whatever angle it comes.
So what is it about Keynote that allows you to sweep your audience off its feet with such little effort?
For starters, Keynote gives you twelve cool themes to work with. Within each theme you'll find several master slides: title, photo, photo with text, bulleted text, title with text, and so on. Just pick the appropriate master, and your slide is already largely complete before you even do anything to it. Double-click to add your text, and away you go. If your text box or any other object is off-center, you just drag it until the "so simple why did it take until 2003 for someone to think of it" yellow grid lines pop up, signaling that you’ve centered your box precisely. Never again will you have to eyeball your slide in a feeble attempt to make sure that everything is reasonably centered. What’s more, grid lines also magically pop up when you’re centering an object between two other objects. Don’t stop to think about how much recalculating is going on in the background to make this possible, just enjoy it. And if you’ve got something against the color yellow, you can change the grid lines to your favorite shade of pumice, for all Keynote cares.
The next wonderfully up-front thing about Keynote is that it puts all your most vital resources right on the toolbar: the add button, delete button, play button, master themes, font panel, color panel, shapes, tables, charts, and Inspector (more on this one later) are all right in front of you at all times. Even better, the tools are represented by such obvious icons that a Kindergartner could decipher them (I have proof of this). The button for adding a slide simply has a plus sign on it. The fact that this "plus button" will be familiar to veterans of iTunes and iPhoto is just a bonus. The "Play" button in Keynote looks identical to the "Play" button on my VCR. And when entering the values for a chart, you can see the chart taking shape as you enter the values in a floating window -- no more guessing about what things might look like once you finish slogging through a chart wizard.
So what of the Inspector? Think "Inspector Gadget," because the Inspector panel has just as much innovation up its sleeve as its cartoon namesake, except that Keynote’s gadgets actually work as intended. Want your presentation to be a cube that rotates to reveal your slides on its faces? That'll take you one click per slide to set up. You’d rather the cube rotate downward instead of to the side? That’s also one click. You’d like it to rotate more slowly? There’s a slider for that. You prefer your slides to be mosaics whose squares blow away in the wind? That'll cost you another click. Want your picture to be translucent enough so that your text will magically show through from underneath? Just drag a slider to turn down the opacity. Turning down the thermostat on my air conditioner is more complicated. Need to rotate an object? There’s a car stereo knob for that. Whatever you can (or can’t) imagine doing to an object on a screen, the Inspector panel has a one-click trick for.
Then there’s the little things that you come to expect from Apple software. The master slides for photos allow you to not only put your photo behind the slide as if you were sliding it into a real picture frame so that only a portion will show through, you can shift your picture to the background simply by clicking on the Back button (even AppleWorks 6.2, perhaps the most intuitive software on the market today, requires you to use a menu for this). The best part is that once your picture is behind the slide, you can still drag it around within the picture frame. You almost have to be using Keynote to get a feel for just how effortless this all is. It’s as if somehow you’re displaying the skills that most graphics professionals spend years learning, yet you’ve only been using it since breakfast. And like all great software, Keynote’s more complicated features (import/export, for example) stay out of your way until you’re ready to discover them. If your Keynote experience goes anything like mine, you'll be ready for those features by dinnertime.
Keynote is currently at version 1.01 (July 2004 update: Keynote is now at version 1.11, you can get the updater here). Since new software starts at 1.00, you get the idea of just how young this application is. I have a long-standing rule of never using version 1.0 software for anything even mildly important, but I made an exception here, based on the sturdiness of most existing features. Still, some features need further fleshing out. The image library is rich with high-quality graphics, but rather than create an interface for viewing and retrieving the images, the developers simply placed one image on each slide of a sample slide show. It’s as if they didn't have time to complete this feature, but didn't want to leave the images out of the mix entirely. And while using your pictures from iPhoto is simple enough, it’s not exactly iLife-easy. Smartly, Keynote’s very first menu has a selection titled “Provide Keynote feedback”. Keynote’s lead engineer says that he reads every submission personally. I’ve sent in my feedback, and so should you. That way, Keynote 2.0 will be even more groundbreaking and innovative. If you want proof that Apple can really crank up the coolness factor with version 2 of an already great product, just check out what they did with iPhoto 2.
There are a few details about Keynote you'll want to know before you take the plunge. Remember, doing your homework ahead of time sets the odds of success in your favor:
- Keynote only runs on MacOS X Jaguar (July 2004 update: also works great on Panther). You say you’re still running MacOS 9? Sorry, Apple stopped developing for OS 9 last year. You’re using a PC running Windows? Not a chance. Software this strong doesn't run on an operating system that weak. Keynote is yet another compelling reason to Switch to a Mac if you haven't already.
- Be absolutely sure to update your system software to at least version 10.2.4 before installing Keynote, as there were various problems reported by those who tried Keynote on version 10.2.3 and below.
- Although Keynote is listed as being able to run on 128 Megabytes of RAM, and indeed it does run, it’s slow enough to take all the fun out of it. You can get another 128 Megabytes for around $20 over the Internet, so do it today, even if you’re not planning on buying Keynote. You'll see dramatic performance improvements in every application.
- Make sure that your Mac model is listed as being capable of running Keynote before you plunk down $99, not after. Stores usually won’t allow you to return opened software, no matter how much you grovel. Keynote requires at least 8 MB of VRAM, if that has any meaning to you. For instance, it runs fine on the second-generation clamshell iBook, but not the first-generation.
- Apple recommends leaving at least a Gigabyte (1024 Megabytes) of free space on your hard drive so that Keynote can temporarily use it during presentations. My experiences suggest that it’s a wise idea, especially if you’re using an older Mac.
