I ‘ve done a number of presentations - personal and business - with iPad using Apple’s £5.99 app Keynote and without hesitation or reservation I can say after almost twenty years of using Microsoft’s PowerPoint on the PC – iPad/Keynote is the future of presentation.
Why? – iPad’s user interface and Keynote’s features and functions .
iPad’s user interface.
Much has been said and written about the iPad good and bad - a big iPod touch , a new computing device , a pointless device which I’m sending back. I understand all of these comments , for me the most apposite comment was from the Steve Woznaik – the technical genius that created the revolutionary Apple’s I and II – he said the iPad takes us back to computing year zero – “a restart” .
Gone are the key board and the mouse: your fingers are actually ,literally and physically in control – Tap, Touch, Touch and Hold, Drag, Flick, Pinch – start, stop programs; move, expand, decrease rotate, cut, paste, copy, text and images.
The keyboard and mice mediate between the user and information doing away with them creates a whole new way of viewing, exploring and reacting to information. The iPad disintermediates as the Internet did for example to travel agents and book sellers, putting users in charge of purchasing holidays for themselves – Lastminute.com and buying books at better prices books – Amazon.com.
Just as the Internet’s disinmtermedatison changed fundamentally the way holidays are organised and purchased equally the way a reader chooses and pays for books so, the iPad changes how we interact with information, giving new ways of accessing and in turn new insights to information by doing away with the keyboard and presenting the information –literally - at your fingertips.
Keynote
Keynote for the iPad has a modern contemporary feel none of the bloated , overburdened feel of PowerPoint. Like Prezi - the online presentation tool - iPad’s Keynote goes for a much reduced set of everything – tools, fonts, actions – so one is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the range of options. Being an Apple product the UI is totally consistent and coherent: sticking rigidly to the iPAD’s UI feel. This makes learning the Keynote a joy as there’s nothing to learn, well almost nothing, as you know how to use it already from using the iPad/iPhone UI.
Keynote does have its draw backs which it shares with other iPad apps - file sharing. The absence of a visible file system leads to other way of sharing files such –via iTunes or iWorks or email for example. There is also no SAVE or SAVE AS command instead there is an auto save function which saves the file every 45s this can lead to files inadvertently being over written. Also the imported PowerPoint presentation are not one hundred percent replicas of the original, imported files still need adjustment
Conclusion
The file handling and sharing issues aside the iPad/Keynote combination is a powerful, flexible and entertaining way to create, present and share information – putting fun into creating and giving a presentation.
