First feedback on Keynote 09: strange themes, new transitions and that’s it

  • Wed, Jan 7, 2009

I am not very happy with this update. There is no many things in it for me. I am not using a lot of transitions and animations in my slides so I don’t really care for the “Magic move” and “sparkly” transitions.

magic-move

I am not convinced by the new themes either. My favorite is the “Showroom”, but to get the a slide similar to the moto slide you need high quality pictures, with a perfect transparency layer and a customized shadow layer. Unless you are a photoshop freak, your Showroom slides will most likely look lame.

keynote-new-theme-showroom

The other themes are not better, they only work for very specific atmosphere. To such an extent that one of the example from the theme gallery looks really weird. Look at the Venetian theme, the building picture doesn’t fit :

keynote-new-theme-venetian

The 3D charts are useless, the iPhone remote is nice, but like the others change it remains a gimmick : I won’t trust wifi and a touch screen for a strategic presentation…

I like Keynote 09, but not really more than I liked Keynote 08. What is needed is an improved interface that makes it even easier to use the application. In this field, I find iWork is really late compared to iLife. When I use iPhoto I don’t have to go into the different tabs of the inspector to do basic things.

numbers-09

I may buy iWork 09 for the much improved Numbers, but I hope iWork 10 will be a much more ambitious update.




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    The "in-between" animation options could be very cool once I start thinking about how to actually use it. Like so many Apple products, the changes were subtle but will be amazing over time.

    For the iPhone remote, I actually think this is quite cool, not just for changing the presentation, but for other things. Imagine presenting with a biz partner having them be able to see the upcoming slides via an iPhone without also being in view of your presenters view laptop screen. You can actually create an ad hoc WiFi network on your Mac so that when you're not in WiFi range you can still use the remote.

    Overall, I think they added some smart, solid upgrades. Not as many as I'd hoped for, but isn't that always the case? :)
 

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