All iPads Does Keynote make it worth buying an iPad?

[nienque]

As a secondary school teacher, I use Keynote a lot. Recently, I have been thinking about purchasing an iPad, so that I can do my prep while in the train or at school. However, before I do, I want to know whether Keynote for the iPad is a proper version of Keynote, or whether it's more like the half-arsed version on iCloud.com :\

I use Keynote for annotating Latin sentences, so I use a lot lines/arrows/boxes. I need to be able to resize and position these with ease and speed. I want each element to be able to appear/disappear individually, so proper transition management is a must.

Could someone who uses Keynote for similar means let me know whether I will be disappointed if I buy an iPad? Cheers

 

[Phonzoxd]

I would just get an Air for that

I saw who i believe to be a teacher on the train a couple of weeks ago using the Air to create a presentation. She was doing slides on school bullying

Its alot less combersome.

 

[Internaut]

Haven't used it, but what about the question of editing vs playing? I wouldn't want to create presentation content on an iPad, unless it was an emergency. But the idea of a quick* in/out business trip where the only tool I need is smartphone + iPad is all I need, appeals. Will iPad Keynote play back your complex Keynote presentations as you intended them? That would be utmost useful.

* Quick in/out business trip? Me? You've got to be having a giraffe. I once went on a one week trip to Fiji, and came back six months later (highlights including military coup), so the Dell from Hell is mandatory .

 

[nienque]

I would just get an Air for that

I saw who i believe to be a teacher on the train a couple of weeks ago using the Air to create a presentation. She was doing slides on school bullying

Its alot less combersome.

I am afraid getting an Air wouldn't be within my budget, especially cause I already have a 2 year old MacBook Pro, so I can't justify buying a new MacBook quite yet. Perhaps if I could get a decent price for it second hand... Is the battery life on the Air better than on the iPad? Cause that's a massive draw to the iPad as well.

Haven't used it, but what about the question of editing vs playing? I wouldn't want to create presentation content on an iPad, unless it was an emergency. But the idea of a quick* in/out business trip where the only tool I need is smartphone + iPad is all I need, appeals. Will iPad Keynote play back your complex Keynote presentations as you intended them? That would be utmost useful.

You make an excellent point. I hadn't considered compatibility yet. My school is massively old-fashioned. At best, I have a projector with a Windows computer hooked up to it. I make PDFs out of my presentations (printing each stage of builds) and then scroll through those. You don't get fancy transitions, but it gets the job done. So I guess the iPad version of Keynote would need to have these printing options. The Air would have the edge on the iPad, cause I could try plugging the input cable for the projector into the Air.

 

[AbeFrohman]

Keynote and a whole lot more

I think for what you're trying to do, an iPad would be a good choice. Keynote for the iPad has a robust set of tools to add transitions, edit slides, etc.

I'm an attorney and use Keynote for closing arguments. I create them right on my iPad and hook up to the court's VGA cable for external display with no issue. I use Keynote Remote on my iPhone to remotely control my slides. The Keynote Remote app also displays notes, so you can truly be untethered from your iPad and free to engage your audience (students or jurors).

I think you'll find you will use your iPad for more and more than just Keynote presentations. You can keep all your scanned lesson plans, attendance records, etc.

 

[nienque]

I think for what you're trying to do, an iPad would be a good choice. Keynote for the iPad has a robust set of tools to add transitions, edit slides, etc.

I'm an attorney and use Keynote for closing arguments. I create them right on my iPad and hook up to the court's VGA cable for external display with no issue. I use Keynote Remote on my iPhone to remotely control my slides. The Keynote Remote app also displays notes, so you can truly be untethered from your iPad and free to engage your audience (students or jurors).

I think you'll find you will use your iPad for more and more than just Keynote presentations. You can keep all your scanned lesson plans, attendance records, etc.

Keynote Remote on the iPhone sounds really cool. That way I could walk around while doing my presentation and keep those pesky students in line And it would certainly be cool to go paperless, which an iPad is more suitable for than an Air....

If it's not too much trouble, could you maybe post a screenshot of the printing options? Just in case I can't hook up the iPad to the projectors, I'd like to be able to print it as a PDF (with 'print each stage of build').

 

[Night Spring]

If it's not too much trouble, could you maybe post a screenshot of the printing options? Just in case I can't hook up the iPad to the projectors, I'd like to be able to print it as a PDF (with 'print each stage of build').

Printing is a weak point of iPads, since you need an AirPrint enabled printer. There are some workarounds, but they are all a bit convoluted and need you to carry an extra device or to install a program on a computer connected to the printer you want to print from.

 

[nienque]

Printing is a weak point of iPads, since you need an AirPrint enabled printer. There are some workarounds, but they are all a bit convoluted and need you to carry an extra device or to install a program on a computer connected to the printer you want to print from.

I guess I could use Dropbox and open the file on a school computer... So long as it can export to PDF properly, that's all I need!

 

[Night Spring]

I guess I could use Dropbox and open the file on a school computer... So long as it can export to PDF properly, that's all I need!

Okay, Dropbox would work.

I'm afraid I don't know enough about Keynote to know if it'll do what you want -- I know it exports to PDF but don't know if it'll do it "properly" the way you want. Hopefully somebody else can shed light on this.

 

[Ledgem]

Haven't used it, but what about the question of editing vs playing? I wouldn't want to create presentation content on an iPad, unless it was an emergency. But the idea of a quick* in/out business trip where the only tool I need is smartphone + iPad is all I need, appeals. Will iPad Keynote play back your complex Keynote presentations as you intended them? That would be utmost useful.

At this point I consider myself to be a Keynote veteran, but I'm still fairly new to Keynote on iOS. I've given a few presentations using my iPad Mini hooked up to a projector (or a display), and using my iPhone as the controller. The animations are kept intact and the slides are largely unchanged. The only things I can think of are that occasionally the text looks slightly different (the default font that Keynote uses is apparently not available on the iOS version, so iOS uses a substitute; you could easily fix this by manually changing the font to something that iOS has), and one transition effect - mosaic with the scale effect - switches to standard mosaic. Magic Move, the most important transition effect, works perfectly.

You make an excellent point. I hadn't considered compatibility yet. My school is massively old-fashioned. At best, I have a projector with a Windows computer hooked up to it. I make PDFs out of my presentations (printing each stage of builds) and then scroll through those. You don't get fancy transitions, but it gets the job done. So I guess the iPad version of Keynote would need to have these printing options. The Air would have the edge on the iPad, cause I could try plugging the input cable for the projector into the Air.

As a bit of a tip, export to Quicktime. Most Windows computers have Quicktime installed. This allows you to retain your animations, and Apple apparently have something built into Quicktime so that it pauses at each slide transition point until you press a key. Once it's fullscreen, you might as well be presenting straight from Keynote itself. The biggest difference (aside from no easy way to go to a specific slide) is that going backwards through slides results in the animations running backwards. With Keynote, going back a slide simply goes back, without any animations.

Also, Apple produces Lightning-VGA adapters so that you can hook your iPad directly to the projector, and project off of it. If your school uses fancy projectors, there are also Lightning-HDMI adapters. The adapters are fairly expensive ($50), but if you use it regularly then it's worthwhile. As an added bonus, few people seem to use them, which gives you some shock value. The iPad to projector + iPhone slide remote setup amazes people every time I work it. It gives you a running start to grabbing people's attention and having a positive perception to your presentation.

To answer the question you posed, however, I must admit that I have never made a Keynote presentation from scratch on the iPad. I've made minor tweaks to presentations, but I think it would be painful to start from scratch... although I suppose it depends on what you're presenting, and how complex you get with your visuals and animations.

I'm an attorney and use Keynote for closing arguments. I create them right on my iPad and hook up to the court's VGA cable for external display with no issue. I use Keynote Remote on my iPhone to remotely control my slides. The Keynote Remote app also displays notes, so you can truly be untethered from your iPad and free to engage your audience (students or jurors).

I'm in the medical field, and I use a similar setup. If there's no projector around and I'm with a small group, I can usually unplug a monitor from a nearby computer and then "project" off of that, allowing the group to sit around the computer while I stand behind them (so as not to block the screen) and present the topic. It's surprisingly useful!

 

[henry72]

I guess I could use Dropbox and open the file on a school computer... So long as it can export to PDF properly, that's all I need!

I'd recommend you use iCloud for syncing all your Keynotes (in fact everything else ). This way you can download it on iCloud.com as PDF, Keynote or PPT. You can even play the slides directly from a PC

Go to iCloud.com and have a play with it. It's pretty useful

 

[nienque]

At this point I consider myself to be a Keynote veteran, but I'm still fairly new to Keynote on iOS. I've given a few presentations using my iPad Mini hooked up to a projector (or a display), and using my iPhone as the controller. The animations are kept intact and the slides are largely unchanged. The only things I can think of are that occasionally the text looks slightly different (the default font that Keynote uses is apparently not available on the iOS version, so iOS uses a substitute; you could easily fix this by manually changing the font to something that iOS has), and one transition effect - mosaic with the scale effect - switches to standard mosaic. Magic Move, the most important transition effect, works perfectly.


As a bit of a tip, export to Quicktime. Most Windows computers have Quicktime installed. This allows you to retain your animations, and Apple apparently have something built into Quicktime so that it pauses at each slide transition point until you press a key. Once it's fullscreen, you might as well be presenting straight from Keynote itself. The biggest difference (aside from no easy way to go to a specific slide) is that going backwards through slides results in the animations running backwards. With Keynote, going back a slide simply goes back, without any animations.

Also, Apple produces Lightning-VGA adapters so that you can hook your iPad directly to the projector, and project off of it. If your school uses fancy projectors, there are also Lightning-HDMI adapters. The adapters are fairly expensive ($50), but if you use it regularly then it's worthwhile. As an added bonus, few people seem to use them, which gives you some shock value. The iPad to projector + iPhone slide remote setup amazes people every time I work it. It gives you a running start to grabbing people's attention and having a positive perception to your presentation.

To answer the question you posed, however, I must admit that I have never made a Keynote presentation from scratch on the iPad. I've made minor tweaks to presentations, but I think it would be painful to start from scratch... although I suppose it depends on what you're presenting, and how complex you get with your visuals and animations.


I'm in the medical field, and I use a similar setup. If there's no projector around and I'm with a small group, I can usually unplug a monitor from a nearby computer and then "project" off of that, allowing the group to sit around the computer while I stand behind them (so as not to block the screen) and present the topic. It's surprisingly useful!

Daaamn, thanks for all of those great suggestions! I now have two or three different angles to make the iPad work with my school's ancient setup.

All I need to figure out now is whether making presentations from scratch will be relatively pain free, and that's something I can only really find out by trying an iPad in a shop. Besides, the iPad only needs to tide me over for one or two hours a day spent in a train. I could save it to iCloud (as henry72 suggested) and do the more cumbersome stuff on my MacBook at home.

Thanks a lot guys

 

[AbeFrohman]

All I need to figure out now is whether making presentations from scratch will be relatively pain free . . .

Unless you're doing intensive graphics, I think you'll find putting together polished presentations won't be that much of a burden. One final point though... You're going to grow weary of touch typing on your iPad's screen if you're doing any significant text input. You're going to want to figure out your keyboard situation. While you're shopping, take a look at the Clamcase Pro. It has a phenomenal bluetooth keyboard that makes your iPad the best of both worlds - the convenience of the iPad and the ability to type like a laptop.

 

[charlituna]

I would answer it this way. If keynote is the only or main reason to consider getting an iPad, don't. Get a computer.

If there are other reasons go for it. After all keynote will be free to you so why not give it a whirl

 

[asleep]

Great thread, great suggestions.

 

[sracer]

Keynote Remote on the iPhone sounds really cool. That way I could walk around while doing my presentation and keep those pesky students in line And it would certainly be cool to go paperless, which an iPad is more suitable for than an Air....

If it's not too much trouble, could you maybe post a screenshot of the printing options? Just in case I can't hook up the iPad to the projectors, I'd like to be able to print it as a PDF (with 'print each stage of build').

KeyNote for iOS is a pitiful subset of KeyNote for OSX. The "good" thing is that if you are developing presentations on the iPad they'll act/look the same on a Mac.

If you attempt the opposite, developing on a Mac to present on the iPad, you'll be greatly frustrated doing anything but the most basic presentations.

I use KeyNote remote to control KeyNote running on my MacBook Pro. Works great, highly recommended. I've run it on my iPhone as well as an iPod Touch 4G.

Connecting an iPad to a projection system can be a dicey situation. You'll need a dongle for VGA and a dongle for HDMI. OEM Apple dongles are an added expense. 3rd party dongles are of questionable quality.

Printing is a weak point of iPads, since you need an AirPrint enabled printer. There are some workarounds, but they are all a bit convoluted and need you to carry an extra device or to install a program on a computer connected to the printer you want to print from.

IMO, if printing is required then simply scrap the idea of using an iPad altogether. The OP initially said that they were thinking of purchasing an iPad. Since they don't have one yet, no sense in cobbling together some Rube Goldberg setup to accomplish the simple tasks.


I own a few iPads (of differing generations), iPhone, iPod Touch, and Macbook Pro, and regularly teach seminars in a variety of venues. I've used the iPad for that, but it is far from optimal. Ideally, an iPad with a full version of KeyNote and full support for printing would be my choice... but Apple isn't there yet.

 

[Nevaborn]

As a secondary school teacher, I use Keynote a lot. Recently, I have been thinking about purchasing an iPad, so that I can do my prep while in the train or at school. However, before I do, I want to know whether Keynote for the iPad is a proper version of Keynote, or whether it's more like the half-arsed version on iCloud.com :\

I use Keynote for annotating Latin sentences, so I use a lot lines/arrows/boxes. I need to be able to resize and position these with ease and speed. I want each element to be able to appear/disappear individually, so proper transition management is a must.

Could someone who uses Keynote for similar means let me know whether I will be disappointed if I buy an iPad? Cheers

To answer the question, they are pretty much the same versions currently you get on iCloud, not like the proper version. Most of my work I would be using pages and not keynote but the iOS and iCloud limitations of that have made it not a replacement for Office.

So like others have said, if you need to create proper presentations with minimal pain then get an air. However I would just say to wait a week and lets see if they give us any meaningful updates at the iPad conference. If the rumors are anything to go by there is going to be lots potentially on display.

 

[nostresshere]

I am afraid getting an Air wouldn't be within my budget, especially cause I already have a 2 year old MacBook Pro,....

Unless you have extra money around, I would probably just stick with the MBP.

 

[Donka]

If you don't get a chance to try out keynote on an iPad soon, I can post a video of how it works and also how well PDF export later in the week. I'm moving house just now so can't do it for a couple of days.

 

[Ledgem]

If you attempt the opposite, developing on a Mac to present on the iPad, you'll be greatly frustrated doing anything but the most basic presentations.

This hasn't been my experience. What problems have you encountered?

 

[sracer]

This hasn't been my experience. What problems have you encountered?

I could give you a long list but I'll start and stop with.... Fonts, custom fonts.

 

[Ledgem]

I could give you a long list but I'll start and stop with.... Fonts, custom fonts.

I could imagine some types of presentations where custom fonts are a big deal, but the font is never changed from the default with the majority of presentations that I've encountered (science and medicine). I don't need a huge list, but what else have you noticed? Transition issues or graphical glitches of any sort? As I mentioned before, I haven't encountered any but that doesn't mean that they're not there. I'd certainly like to know what some of the issues are so that I can work around them in my own presentations.

 

[nienque]

If you don't get a chance to try out keynote on an iPad soon, I can post a video of how it works and also how well PDF export later in the week. I'm moving house just now so can't do it for a couple of days.

Thanks for the offer, but I managed to give it a whirl today, actually!

On the upside, it can do the things I want to do relatively painfree (transitions, moving stuff, copy/pasting). Downside is that the presentation I made on my Mac looks all jumbled up on the iPad. Everything is all over the place!* Perhaps it has something to do with the different aspect ratios of the Mac and the iPad? I will have to figure out how to make the presentation so that it looks the same on both devices.

* Very similar to what happens when I open a Powerpoint in Keynote, actually... Damn, how hard is it to give us cross-compatibility?!

 

[Abazigal]

Keynote on IOS is fairly dumbed down (and not necessarily in a bad sense). If all you have are a few minutes, and you simply need to slap together a few slides consisting of little more than some simple bullet points, a picture here and there, followed by a transition, then yes, it would work. Pretty well in fact.

For what it's worth, the touch interface does make interacting with transitions and movement of individual sections of the presentation much easier though, compared to using a mouse on a laptop.

For anything more complex, stick to the desktop version of iworks.

 

[sracer]

I could imagine some types of presentations where custom fonts are a big deal, but the font is never changed from the default with the majority of presentations that I've encountered (science and medicine). I don't need a huge list, but what else have you noticed? Transition issues or graphical glitches of any sort? As I mentioned before, I haven't encountered any but that doesn't mean that they're not there. I'd certainly like to know what some of the issues are so that I can work around them in my own presentations.

You brush off the custom font issue because you don't use them. If your use case of OSX KeyNote is compatible with the iOS version, then you are correct, you would not notice any differences. I suspect that Apple did some user testing of KeyNote to identify a few core functions that the majority of people use and focused on them.

If you are pleased with the iOS version of KeyNote then that is fine. I'm not looking to convince anyone to think differently about it.

But the original poster doesn't currently have an iPad and doesn't have any experience with the iOS version of KeyNote so I wanted to warn them about the irritations/frustrations that they may encounter. And since iOS KeyNote is a subset of OSX KeyNote, anything developed under iOS will appear/act the same on OSX.