Keynote '07 Features?

[Snowy_River]

I sometimes need to use equations. For this purpose I use my old copy of Appleworks. Many people don't know it but Appleworks has an equation editor. I don't use it often enough to judge its ease of use but it does make nice looking equations.

Equation Editor that comes with Appleworks is the lite version of MathType, which I bought and use for creating equations anytime I need them. I'm not that much of a fan of LaTex, because you have to know how to code it. I much prefer the WYSIWYG interface of MathType (which is capable of exporting LaTex code, if you need it). The one thing that I keep hoping for is for the hooks that were in Appleworks to appear in iWork. A menu item called "Insert Equation..." opens Equation Editor or MathType (or, for that matter, any other equation creating program that conformed to certain standards), then when you're done it automatically inserts your equation. Better still, if you then double click on your equation, it opens it up in the editor again!

As it stands, MathType works great, but you have to copy your equations back and forth to be able to edit them.

 

[irbdavid]

Or you could just use Grapher. It's on your hard disk already.

Latexit does a nicer job of generating images it seems, which makes it work a little better with other programs. But yeah, good point.

I sometimes need to use equations. For this purpose I use my old copy of Appleworks. Many people don't know it but Appleworks has an equation editor. I don't use it often enough to judge its ease of use but it does make nice looking equations.

Can't say i've used it much either, but if it's anything like the one included with MS Office, or openoffice for that matter, then it's too fiddly. Too much clicking/selecting of stuff. Latex you can just type away, i find it a lot faster. Personal preference though mostly i guess.

 

[Snowy_River]

Can't say i've used it much either, but if it's anything like the one included with MS Office, or openoffice for that matter, then it's too fiddly. Too much clicking/selecting of stuff. Latex you can just type away, i find it a lot faster. Personal preference though mostly i guess.

While it's more limited with Equation Editor, with MathType you can customize the keyboard shortcuts quite a bit, allowing you to just type.

 

[illegalprelude]

My mom is still using AppleWorks 6. She's one of those people who has no need to share her documents with anyone else, so she could etch them into a stone tablet for all she cares. However, once she learns a program, getting her to switch takes some effort. I tried to get her to go to Word, but she discovered what millions, nay I say billions, have already discovered. Word freakin' drives splinters up my spine! It tries to be WAY too helpful. So, she stuck with AppleWorks.

I've been telling her about iWork; we even purchased the first version. However, I didn't try to force it on her cause I know the program will only get better. Can't wait for it to development into more of a suite so I can finally get her off the barely-native OSX AppleWorks.

are you serious? I got iWorks 05 and its ok....but word out paces pages left and right. Pages has alot of retarded issues it needs to fix. If anything, its Pages that tried to be too easy and is just a mess

 

[yac_moda]

Equation Editor that comes with Appleworks is the lite version of MathType, which I bought and use for creating equations anytime I need them. I'm not that much of a fan of LaTex, because you have to know how to code it. I much prefer the WYSIWYG interface of MathType (which is capable of exporting LaTex code, if you need it). The one thing that I keep hoping for is for the hooks that were in Appleworks to appear in iWork. A menu item called "Insert Equation..." opens Equation Editor or MathType (or, for that matter, any other equation creating program that conformed to certain standards), then when you're done it automatically inserts your equation. Better still, if you then double click on your equation, it opens it up in the editor again!

As it stands, MathType works great, but you have to copy your equations back and forth to be able to edit them.

I would think integrating Automator with the iApps could create something quite amazingly powerful and easy to use.

Years ago when I was working at Silicon Beach and Apple was just starting to think about OpenDoc, and segue into that dead end of endless complexity, I was working on Intellidraw, the precursor of, copied and usurped by Visio.

It was an early version and design that never made it to market, it was very graphical, more graphical then just charting and had infinite undo which was potentially highly scriptable, because ALL MOUSE EVENTS were in the undo chain !!! Some of this design was created by MY recommendations

IT WAS DUMPED ONCE THE POTENTIAL WAS KNOWN

It became very obvious that this kind of app would be so highly scriptable, and easy to script in a reliable way, that it would replace programmers !!!

SO THE PROGRAMMERs PROMPTLY DUMPED IT !!

Apple was in on many things that we did so they could have heard about this !

That group was soo sad and pathetic, just for ONE reason, because as a company they were PERFECTLY positioned to USE their installed base for marketing. They had EXCESSIVE calls to tech support for scripting support of Supercard, yet they did NOT see this as a marketing opportunity THEY SAW IT AS A COST !!!

They kept bitching about how Supercard had around 100 sort of programmers who would call for FREE to get FREE scripts and would then sell the supercard apps as C++ code to their clients !?!?!?!

And so they researched how much it would cost to make a high end compiler version of Supercard, to REPLACE the old Supercard, but if they HAD A CLUE they would have continued to sell the old low end version CHEAP, and then sell the high end version of thousands -- now that would have been profitable ! And use all the contacts that comes from that to sell all the other products that we had.

One year ONE sales girl sold 3/4 a million $$$ of software half the companies revenues and a little more then the entire Aldus sales team -- THEN THEY FIRED HER !

They should NEVER had sold the company they could made a MUCH BIGGER fortune with decent marketing !!!

SOO STUPID !!!!!!

Apple is now well positioned to use Automator and iApps to segue into this kind POWER

It will be interesting to see if it goes that way !!!

 

[aswitcher]

I doubt Keynote will ever be presented for free....that would be nice though!

Agreed, Apple is looking for regular income streams. iLife, iWorks, .Mac...an iPod every year new Mac every three years.

 

[digitalbiker]

I would think integrating Automator with the iApps could create something quite amazingly powerful and easy to use.

Automator has the potential to be fantastic someday.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the iApps functionality is unavailable to Automator. Apple really needs to add more hooks to their iWork, iLife, and Pro Software apps so that Automator can be the mix and match application to blow everything else away.

 

[digitalbiker]

You have the wrong thread. This is the Keyonte thread, you want the Charts thread.

Great news. I agree that nothing groundbreaking needs to be done for Keynote - it's a solid app already. Further refinements is great though, and helps make iWork a continually improving suite. One must wonder if Apple's product roadmap and timeline for iWork coincides with the final release of Office for Mac in the next year or so. Although they don't want to be a direct competitor to MS right now, once that last version of Office is developed, Apple might be positioning iWork to be a very powerful suite indeed.

Even though Keynote is definitely the best app in the iWork suite, I wouldn't say that it is above improvement. It could use a lot more themes and more integration of animation, sound, graphic file syncing, live web link updating, etc.

It could also provide better support for more graphic input formats. It also needs multiple pointer selection while in presentation mode.

Also I agree 100% that Keynote needs a free windows viewer so that the 99% of the population that uses PP can have the same control that the free PP viewer provides.

The export to QT option wastes a lot of space. It creates unnecessary gigantic files for transitions,etc and the graphics and effects get distorted when converted for some themes, the presentation control is more limited, and slide notes are unavailable.

 

[yac_moda]

Automator has the potential to be fantastic someday.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the iApps functionality is unavailable to Automator. Apple really needs to add more hooks to their iWork, iLife, and Pro Software apps so that Automator can be the mix and match application to blow everything else away.

I don't have automator yet, but have read about it a little.

From what I have seen if they were to add Wizards for more complicated types of functions in the iApps and link this to Automator, that would be typical functionality, but together awesome and surpass everything else.

If they implemented infinite undo with events as individual actions in the loop the power would be AMAZING !

But they probably won't do that.

Or they may not do any of it, programmers seem to have borrowed an ethic from India that Gandi may have taught, that EFFICIENCY IS BAD instead CREATE INEFFICIENCY AND JOBS !!!, although this is silly India is really an example of how this DOES NOT WORK and America is an example of how efficiency DOES WORK

Soon, maybe in 20 years, China will change the world so that the only way to survive well will be to invent SOMETHING ANYTHING because manufacturing will be so easy and cheap and TOTALLY on the web and integrated with easy to use 3D modeling apps !

GOOD OLD AMERICAN INVENTOR ETHICS

 

[Eraserhead]

While it's more limited with Equation Editor, with MathType you can customize the keyboard shortcuts quite a bit, allowing you to just type.

Yeah but you're forgetting the $100 cost of MathType, LaTeX (and LaTeXiT) on the otherhand is completely free.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Keynote needs a theme editor, alá Pages. My only frustration with Keynote is not having the size of photo placeholder I need or want. It should also be made a lot easier to create themes from scratch, again, as in Pages. I'd also like to see animations along a path, though obviously this could be subject to much abuse by presenters (hint: don't give your audience a headache). Finally, I 'd like an inner shadow option in addition to the drop shadow.

I also agree with the earlier poster asking for more efficient Flash file exports. Most people don't know but you can develop an entire Flash web site in Keynote (very cool!). The only problem, and the thing that keeps me from doing it more often, is the file size.

 

[blybug]

Keynote needs a theme editor, alá Pages. My only frustration with Keynote is not having the size of photo placeholder I need or want. It should also be made a lot easier to create themes from scratch, again, as in Pages. I'd also like to see animations along a path, though obviously this could be subject to much abuse by presenters (hint: don't give your audience a headache). Finally, I 'd like an inner shadow option in addition to the drop shadow.

My only request for Keynote is color control over hyperlinks. I do alot of non-linear presentations that require group interaction and feedback (ie Jeopardy-type games) with students. There's no way to distinguish visited from non-visited hyperlinks when returning to a "home" page in a presentation like this. For me, that's the only thing Apple missed in Keynote 06.

 

[~Shard~]

Even though Keynote is definitely the best app in the iWork suite, I wouldn't say that it is above improvement. It could use a lot more themes and more integration of animation, sound, graphic file syncing, live web link updating, etc.

Quite true, I wasn't trying to imply it did not need any major updates. I guess I was thinking more along the lines that with the rumored introduction of Charts, perhaps that new app has been the focus for iWork this year, and as a result, Keynote will just get minor updates for iWork 07, and that that is okay (for now) since it's not like Keynote needs a ton of work and has a great deal of major issues. Then perhaps for iWork 08 we'll see Keynote get the focus instead of Charts (and throw Pages in there too.) iWork 09 is going to be one sweet suite.

All speculation and good fun of course...

 

[jsalzer]

Equations

Yeah but you're forgetting the $100 cost of MathType, LaTeX (and LaTeXiT) on the otherhand is completely free.

Ah, but you're forgetting the hours it takes to figure out how the heck to install LaTeX. I'm not too shabby with a computer, and after an hour of reading various instructions and installing various components, I gave up.

MathType has always been great, and very user friendly. Without the hook into Pages, though, it's not half as useful as it could be.

 

[Eidorian]

Ah, but you're forgetting the hours it takes to figure out how the heck to install LaTeX. I'm not too shabby with a computer, and after an hour of reading various instructions and installing various components, I gave up.

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

Problem SOLVED. I've had to install TeX so many times.

 

[BWhaler]

This is exciting.

I use Keynote full time, and think it is a phenomenal application.

These new features are great, and not too many of them. Fixing the bugs, more speed, and better MSOffice compatibility will be the highest priorities on my list.

For iWork 07, what I am hoping for and will spend the upgrade money on is Pages.

MSWord is simply terrible, but Pages is just not ready for prime time (for me.)

Nothing would make me happier than for the next version of Pages to finally put in the 10-20 key missing features, make it fast, stomp out the many nasty bugs, and fix the design issues.

It would be great to finally be rid of Word and be able to create beautiful documents on a more frequent basis.

 

[Platform]

Keynote is SO much better than PP, '07 should be great.

They need to work on Pages though to make me switch from Word. Even the spell/grammer check is worlds apart

 

[commonpeople]

I love Keynote- it gives me an instant advantage when giving talks. I gave a guest lecture at University of Texas last week, and as usual the audience loved the presentation.

Currently, the biggest problem with Keynote is that it's too good. It's too easy to make a presentation that overwhelms the audience with cool transitions and graphics that you forget that the main point of a talk is to instill information. I for one would like Apple to include some instructions on how to give effective presentations.

Also, how about including a timer in the monitor screen so that you (and not the audience) can see how much time is left for the talk. This is really important in scientific conferences.

 

[geeman]

...how about including a timer in the monitor screen so that you (and not the audience) can see how much time is left for the talk. ..

That's already there. You can have a clock showing the actual time, and/or a "time elapsed" clock viewable on your screen. Check out Preferences->Presenter Display.

Features I'd like to see in the next version:

1) Animations on a bezier path (already been mentioned here)
2) Animations that allow an object to start and one place on a slide and finish at another place (related to #1, I would think)
3) Ability to have graduated fills/images as text colors (and animated options)
4) Not really a 'feature', but improving the image quality of a QT movie that's been placed on a slide. Currently, playing a QT movie full-frame in QuickTime Player gives you better pictorial quality.

 

[Shadow]

I just bought a macbook, a big factor in which was to use keynote at presentations/lectures. The HD part may be overkill though - how many decently sized projecters display at anything above 1024x768 these days?

Myschool projector goes upto 1080p (I know-I've seen it. Burns ya eyes ).

 

[officerdick]

Custom slideshows

Custom slide shows would be a really nice feature because i use keynote in my in my church. i need the ability to have a couple hundred slides (mainly worship songs) and choose wich ones you want for a given sermon. Though it is possible in this version of keynote, you can simply hide a slide, but when you're at 200 slides the feature becomes verry messy. Anothter workarround wich i use is to make all slides masters. then you can apply them in any order. though a real custom slideshow would be nice, wtih alpabetacal sorting.

just my 2 cents

 

[FloatingBones]

What I'd love to see added to Keynote

I'd like Keynote to either provide an app for the Bluetooth Palm (TX in my case) or provide the hooks for a highly interactive app on the Palm that could do:

1. Slide preview
2. Next/Previous slides and access a random slide in the show
3. Have an area for notes on each slide

Yes, I know about Salling Clicker and the USB Overdrive. They can control Keynote, but have no capability for displaying slide sample on the Palm screen and no capability to jump to a random slide.

--phil

 

[Epicurus]

I'd like Keynote to either provide an app for the Bluetooth Palm (TX in my case) or provide the hooks for a highly interactive app on the Palm that could do:

1. Slide preview
2. Next/Previous slides and access a random slide in the show
--phil

If the next iPod has wireless sync (or if an iPhone materializes) I could see this being a key selling point. Keynote integration is already being used to seel the new version of iChat in Leopard. The iPod is probably better due to screen size versus some phone's screen, but who knows what an iPhone would look like anyway.

 

[jackc]

Or you could just use Grapher. It's on your hard disk already.

Whoa, I've never seen that before! Cool, it's like I have a new OS.