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Review
Installation & Documentation
Ease of use
Value for money
Price approx.	RRP $235.15 + GST
Operating System	Mac OS X v10.2.8+ 128MB of RAM (512MB recommended) 1 GB disk space QuickTime 6.3+ recommended G3+ processor 8MB video memory (32MB recommended)
Available from	Apple Resellers

NZ Macguide Issue 10

There's an interesting thing that happens in the computer world when Apple produces something of interest. People rubbish it as eye-candy, then start to quietly copy its look and then they start to notice that beyond the looks, the performance of it is pretty great too. Soon they start to mimic both the look and the functionality. I submit into evidence the iMac, Mac OS X and now Keynote, Apple's new presentation tool. Competitors would do well to improve the functionality of their overly complex and not-that-attractive software.

Hmm??I've been here before
Obviously Apple didn't want to reinvent the presentation wheel when developing Keynote. On launch you'll see a fairly familiar environment, where you are asked to choose one of the 12 themes available. Despite the variety that 12 themes offer, I would lay money on Keynote version 2 coming out at some point with a lot more themes. But if you are wanting more than what Keynote offers, there are sites starting to pop up with add-on themes already.

The program includes all the features that you would expect from a presentation package; outline view, notes and master slides. It also allows easy addition of text, shapes, tables and charts. The interface is relatively simple, but fairly soon after launch, you're going to want to access to the Inspector. This inspector owes a lot to similar palettes in products like Word and PowerPoint, but it would have been good to see Apple simplify the process or produce something even more different. That said, the Inspector is needed to provide greater control and performance over each of the slides.

Keynote's 12 themes. They look great but are they enough?

Theme party
Keep in mind that when you choose a theme in Keynote, you're not just selecting the background style. You are also choosing the font and the style that goes with this font. This shows that Apple have placed a lot of importance on the overall appearance of your slides. The "Linen Book" theme (for example) just doesn't incorporate a nice font; the words seem embossed into the background like you would expect with a book cover like that.

The most powerful aspect of themes is that it is ridiculously easy to change the theme of your presentation (which can be done at any point you like) and see the program work thought and change all aspects of the theme throughout your file. This makes the ability to try out and change to a different theme almost effortless.

He's just going through a transition
I have one problem that constantly bugs me with presentation software. In all the applications I have used, adding a transition is often something done as an after thought. You type your slide up, make another slide, then (depending on how you work) you organise what transition you'll have between the two, or you go back later and work all that magic in so that the presentation looks great. I'd like to see Keynote have an option so that as you add in the next slide (maybe with a "Add transition and new slide" button), you are prompted for the transition that will take you through to that slide there and then, instead of having to back later.

There's no doubting that the transitions just look incredible. There is a nice range, with the ability to determine the direction of the transition. They look great on screen and they really highlight the power of the graphics engine under Jaguar. Using a (strangely termed) 'Build' section, you can further animate objects in numerous ways, so that they move, spin or individually appear on the slide.

Continuing on from this, Keynote features what many would expect to find only in a graphics program. It's a breeze to take objects and rotate, position (all with on-screen feedback) resize or change in opacity, to allow you to create the images that you want, rather than being restricted by the program. Images can have transparent background, although in my test, importing of Photoshop files failed in this respect. Test too can be altered for spacing by character (horizontal spacing) and by each line.

Objects can have opacity, shadow, offsets and more. Wow.

I'm in the Import/Export business
I wasn't expecting great things from the ability of Keynote to import PowerPoint files, so I dragged out one of my dreary old presentations and was pleasantly surprised with how well it handled importing the slides. Keep in mind though that if you are like me and can't afford a Mac laptop (and also don't see Macs provided at a lot of venues) you know you have to be prepared to use a PC. So there is a chance you might want to turn up at a venue with your Keynote exported to PowerPoint and (possibly) on a floppy disk. However, there is an issue with exporting to PowerPoint so that you can go anywhere. Keynote files are huge!

As a simple test I started up Keynote and selected my theme. I saved the file without adding any comments and was immediately faced with a 3.2Mb file. The PowerPoint slide that I imported and then exported went from being a 420K file at the start to 4.2 MB when exported back with no alterations other than applying a theme. This to me isn't an issue if you have your own laptop, use zip disks or CDs or have net access, but all too often, I've come across shared presentation experiences at conference where you are expected to provide a floppy disk with your work on.

A possible alternative is to export to a QuickTime movie. This includes the ability to export the transitions into QuickTime. Be warned that this too is going to create a large file, but at least it preserves many aspects of your original, including it automatically coding stops into the movie for each slide. If you want the transitions to look nice and fluid though, you're going to have use a high frame rate (20 frames or more per second) and this will increase the file size dramatically.

One last thing??
There's no doubting that Keynote looks superb and is a pleasure to prepare presentations with. It's a pleasing combination of standard presentation tool with superior graphics functionality thrown in. It does have a few quirks that take getting used to and a few edges that need polishing, including some of the terminology (printing out three slides with room for notes sees you print "Producer notes"). While the tables can in fact be quite sophisticated, you have to get into the program to realise this. Data entry for charts needs improving (currently has to be done manually) and Keynote would benefit from a wizard that allowed you to import data and have a chart created for you.

I'm sure that the next version will see the number of themes substantially increased and the interface refined. I'm not suggesting that the application feels rushed, just that it shows that it is the first version of what is going to continue becoming a superb presentation tool. Now that I've had a chance to discover how great Keynote looks, I'm kicking myself for not owning a laptop. Then again, maybe with such a great looking program, Keynote gives me enough reasons to go out and buy one?

	Pros Ease of use Imports older presentation files Superior graphics and good themes Cons Large files Clunky data entry Strange terminology
The graphs look stunning, but their creation takes some time and can't be automated

© Parkside Media 2004
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