PowerPoint vs. Keynote

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Loading...

It’s been a while since Apple released Keynote 2 and the reviews are pouring in. I’ve used Keynote 1 and although I loved the look and interface, the product itself was seriously underpowered. Steve Jobs might have used it for his presentations but that’s hardly surprising, because if he started using PowerPoint, who would use Keynote? Meanwhile, PowerPoint:mac 2004 was probably the best PowerPoint release ever across versions and Microsoft is already working on the next PowerPoint version on both Mac and Windows. One very crucial advantage that Microsoft has over Apple in the presentation arena is its presence on both platforms. If Apple is serious about Keynote, it has to become a cross-platform product like QuickTime and FileMaker.

Meanwhile, these reviews make interesting comparisons.

Mike Wendland thinks Keynote is not as full-featured as one would like.

He further adds: The other iWork program is actually a long-overdue upgrade to the Keynote application Apple released a couple of years ago to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint. The new version really looks sharp, and it’s easier to insert photos and animations. Though greatly improved, it still seems a bit klutzy compared with PowerPoint. For instance, it lacks PowerPoint’s ease of embedding and playing movies in slides.

Read more on the Detroit Free Press site.

Mike’s review sparked off an intense debate on the Mac Observer site.

The editor, Bryan Chaffin says, Though the iWork suite is a fraction of the price of just Word, for instance, many consumers and professionals alike will be making the comparison, whether or not either of Apple’s offerings are intended to replace Word or PowerPoint.

Read more on the Mac Observer site.

Dan Pourhadi sings a different tune, Now that I’ve had a taste of Keynote 2, I realize that this new version of Keynote is much more a PowerPoint Killer than Pages is a Word Killer. In fact, I don’t see much of a need to use PowerPoint at all anymore.

Read more on the Macteens site.

The coming months are definitely going to be even more interesting. If nothing else, the emergence of Keynote has certainly woken up Microsoft like nothing else. Microsoft typically has focused more on Word and Excel than PowerPoint. Will this change? Let’s wait and watch.