I get a call on Monday afternoon from a new client to do a couple of presentations on Tuesday on the Web Client Software Factory and Unity from Microsoft Patterns & Practices. No big deal technically as I have given many presentations on those subjects. The question going through my mind is do I want to do this on the new MacBook Pro which is untested for presentations or do I want to go back to the old reliable, but slow Dell XPS laptop? Hmmm...
A smarter person would have opted for the Dell, but I decided to go boldly with the MacBook Pro :) I then decided to go one further. How about I use iWork Keynotes instead of Microsoft Powerpoint? I forsee myself running vmware Fusion in Unity Mode with Visual Studio 2008 and Keynotes running together flawlessly on the desktop. Of course, I also didn't no squat about Keynotes and already had some perfectly good Powerpoint Presentations on WCSF and Unity done.
Again, a smarter person would have stayed with Powerpoint, but I am a sucker for a little challenge, so I fired up Keynotes and started to move a lot of the content I had in Powerpoint to Keynotes by hand. While doing this, a few things struck me:
- Keynotes is incredibly simple to use. Without reading the help file, I was instantly productive.
- Keynotes creates gorgeous presentations. Using the stock templates and settings created a nice set of presentations.
- Creating transitions, build ins, build outs, and actions was easy enough for anyone to create more animated presentations.
Keynotes actually made putting together a presentation enjoyable! I always hated using Powerpoint. Always. I am not sure what is different, but Keynotes just made it fun. Maybe it is because the interface is simple and more intutive to use. Maybe it is because the templates, assets, and tools just deliver nicer results more easily. Maybe it is because I just feel a bit more creative now that I have a Mac. I don't have a clue, but what I can tell you is that for the first time I felt really proud of my presentation slides. There weren't a lot of slides as no developer, especially myself, wants to be in Keynotes when he can be playing in Visual Studio. However, those slides that were there looked really, really good if I do say myself.
If you do a decent amount of presentations and have a Mac, I recommend checking out Keynotes if you haven't already. From now on when you see me at a presentation, it will be the MacBook Pro and Keynotes all the way baby :)
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