PowerPoint or Keynote for Mac ?
Yesterday I was involved in an interesting debate over the virtues of PowerPoint over Apple Keynote. The argument was more or less based on the idea that a suite of applications (iWork) can no way compete with Office that costs £100s. The premise was ‘you get what you pay for’. The good humoured debate went on for some time and this member of the medical professional swore he could not present to the level he needed with Keynote.
We decided to convert one of his current presentations to Keynote and compare the differences. Within twenty minutes he was convinced. People are hooked on PowerPoint and a cursory glance at the minimal interface of Keynote would have you thinking it is a pretty basic presentation application. it isn’t! The obvious advantage is the massive integration with iLife allowing you to pull from your iTunes and iPhoto libraries but this is a very powerful presentation tool.
1. Alpha Transparency
We covered this in a tutorial last year. If you pull an image into Keynote that has a different background colour to the one used in your presentation the this tool will allow you to make the image look as if it was specifically created for your presentation. We won’t go into too much detail as you can watch the full video tutorial here.
2. Image Control
Keynote allows you to control images without leaving Keynote. Insert an image and you can control, brightness, contrast, exposure in fact all the fine tuning controls featured in iPhoto. It is very easy to add a blue tint to images used as backgrounds etc.
3. Export Options
Yes you can save a Keynote as a Powerpoint file but over the last year I have been exporting in a number of different options. There is the PDF handout, but better still you can export as images for use on a website, as a flash video and best of all as a Quicktime for iPod. Check out our Keynote to YouTube Video Tutorial.
Imagine at the end of your presentation saying that your Keynote is available on your blog in iPod format for revision later on! Better still it is a one click option. The quality of the Quicktime is good enough to be used in iMovie and even FinalCut.
4. Animation Control
The level of animation for both transitions and assets in Keynote is amazing. Best of all you can combine zoom and movement to create BBC style video presentations. You can zoom in on an area of a map, add lines, move around the map, and zoom back out at the end. The transitions are easy to add and offer full previews. There is a massive selection and best of all you can control the fine points such as speed etc.
5. Movie Control
Ever moved a presentation from one computer to another to find your movie no longer works. Well Keynote takes a copy of the movie and adds it to the Keynote Package. In easy terms it means your Keynote travels perfectly. Keynote offers control of the movie even while your presentation is playing so you can go back, repeat and pause without having to back to the interface.
Don’t get me wrong this is not a PowerPoint bashing post it is merely flagging the true power of Apple Keynote.
5 Comments
I recently used keynote to produce the presentation i gave to an international audience abroad. My first instinct was to go with Powerpoint seeing as the conference was being held somewhere where Macs weren’t in use, but, being brave and with the knowledge that i could run the presentation from my laptop at the podium i decided to go with Keynote.
It is in my opinion a lot simpler and far easier to get great looking presentations out of Keynote. It’s video handling capabilities far outweigh Powerpoint’s with the added bonus of having in app access to your iMovie/iPhoto/iTunes libraries.
So, come the day of my presentation and the podium cables decide they hate me, the auditorium has no macs from which to run my presentation from either! but, quick as a flash, the laptop is up in the gantry, one ad-hoc wifi connection to my iPhone running the keynote remote app and i’m running the show from 50 metres away.
The use of ICT in hospital schools goes down a storm but more so, the use of iPhones to control the presentation. Job done!
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I’m a big fan of Keynote, I find it a lot nicer to work with than Powerpoint. The way it includes media files in the ‘package’ makes it much easier to move presentations from drive to drive. Files can get huge though.
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DigMo Reply:
May 17th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
totally agree, and no media addressing issues with embedded video files. I love it.
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@Dino
or Magic Mouse
clicking slides on Powerpoint isn’t as convenient as it is on Keynote. right-clicking on Powerpoint brings out the menu, instead of undoing played animation or presented slides. and that’s where wireless mouse like Magic Mouse plays remote controller
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@Dino (or anyone for that matter): Do you know a way to control a Keynote presentation remotely that allows the presenter to pause on a slide? Ideally, one of the iPhone remote apps allows for pausing. I’ve been looking, but haven’t found the answer yet. Thoughts?
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