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Apple Keynote 09 users: go back to PowerPoint 2004?

Keynote is smart, fun to use, and full of bells and whistles. Animations in Keynote are probably slightly better than those in the last Microsoft PowerPoint version. But I'm not a fan of animation. Most of the time, it deviates your audience's attention away from the contents. I must say I almost never use Keynote, as I coach people on PowerPoint, the business standard. So, I stick to PowerPoint, and I personally prepare my stuff using PowerPoint 2004 for Mac.

Still, last week, I decided to try out Keynote 09 for one of my Confucius talks to Managers workshops to be held in Germany by the end of the month. Today, I had a couple of bad surprises with Keynote 09 related to what we call in PowerPoint “Notes pages.” When you want to rehearse a complex presentation, it makes sense to write down the key message. Keynote slips here without elegance: that’s the least I can say.

I regularly use two synchronized Macs for my presentations. On my MacBook Air, I have the full slide that is also projected onto the screen. On my MacBook Pro 17", I have, just in case, my full notes and the small slide screens. Remember, it's about preparation here: the contents are complex and I want to be good.

My presentation was almost finished and I started reviewing it with a loud voice in my home office. The Keynote function “Customize Presentation Display” looks great. But, horror! It is completely unstable. The font size is unstable. The layout is unstable. This is not only after having closed your presentation, but worse, during the presentation itself. Want 30-point font? Whoops! You get 14 point after a while, which is unreadable. Or suddenly, your “notes pages” take up 75% of the screen instead of 25%. I tried several times to fix these problems, but it is still completely unstable. It’s good that I always take time to rehearse at home! Good luck to decrypt the small text below from a distance...

What did I do? I reported the bugs to Apple (it’s a sure thing that they will correct this). I then saved my work as a PowerPoint presentation and selected the 5-year-old but flexible and well-thought-out “Presentation Tools.” Now I'm finalizing the presentation with my stable PowerPoint 2004 like a champ. There is enough space to put the full text as content is challenging, and I want to use appropriate formulation in German when I'll be on stage.

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