PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Buying iWork (and Keynote)

You can buy a copy of Apple iWork (and Apple Keynote) as a retail boxed product on CD at any of the Apple stores or resellers. You can also buy the same boxed product from the Apple online store. There are different Apple stores on Apple’s various international sites.

In addition, you can buy an electronic download version of iWork from the Apple website.

Do remember that there are essentially two versions of iWork available:

• The Single User pack can be installed on one system.
• The Family Pack allows you to install on up to 5 systems in your household.

The Family Pack costs just a little bit more than the Single User pack, and so it makes a lot of sense to get that version even if you just need to install iWork on 2 systems. As you can see the pricing in Figure 1, below, a single user pack as of today costs $79, whereas a family pack costs $99.

Figure 1: iWork Purchase Options

No wonder everyone wants to buy the Family Pack!

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, iWork, Keynote

Getting a Trial Version of Keynote (and iWork)

Unless your Mac came with a trial version of iWork, you’ll want to download the evaluation from the Apple site. You’ll also want to get the trial version if you are using an earlier version of Keynote and iWork, and want to see all the new improvements before you buy a retail copy of iWork.

You can download the trial version from the Apple iWork Trial page, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Apple iWork Trial Download

As you can see in the figure above, the current version of iWork is iWork 08 which includes Keynote 08. Be prepared for a long download though. As of today, the download is a whopping 469 megabytes.

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, iWork, Keynote

Do I Already Have Apple Keynote?

If you bought a new Mac, chances are you already have a trial version of Apple iWork that includes Apple Keynote. Even otherwise, you can download a trial version of iWork from the Apple site. However, before you download the trial, just check if you already have iWork. To do that, follow these steps:

1. On your Mac Dock, click the Finder option (normally the first option from the left) to launch the Finder window.
2. In the left pane of the Finder, click Applications to see a list of installed applications in your Mac, as shown in Figure 1, below.

What is Apple Keynote?

Apple Keynote is a popular presentation program that helps you create slides with all sorts of textual, visual, and multimedia content.

Keynote was launched as a standalone program, but Apple subsequently launched word processing and spreadsheet programs called Pages and Numbers. Now, all these three programs are sold as a combined suite of applications called iWork. Presently, iWork is a Mac-only suite of programs that has no compatible option on the Windows platform.

Being the oldest of all programs in iWork, Keynote is the most evolved and capable program of the lot. On this set of pages, we’ll jot down my experiences of working with Keynote. Please feel free to add your thoughts, opinions, and ideas through your comments.

Have a great day.

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, Keynote

Producer 2007 for PowerPoint Now in Public Beta

If you belong to the group of users who often used Microsoft Producer to create online content with their PowerPoint presentations, then you must have been not too happy to know that Producer no longer worked with PowerPoint 2007 content.

Now that issue is being addressed—and Microsoft has announced a public beta of Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. Yes, that’s a long name, and Ric Bretschneider, Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft tells you why he needs to use that long name—and he also explains how you can join the beta and get a copy of this cool, free product.

Everything is explained on the PowerPoint Team Blog.

Filed Under: Microsoft Office
Tagged as: Microsoft Office, Online Presentations, PowerPoint