Key Points in Presentation Software
Review by Rory Bowman
When you have nothing to say, nothing says it quite like PowerPoint: complete with animation and sound effects. For those who missed the corporate 90’s, PowerPoint is “presentation software,” allowing the most unskilled user to create electronic slide shows and practice electronic sophistry with just a few clicks of the mouse.
Originally a Mac program in 1987, it was purchased by Microsoft and included in the first 1990 versions of Microsoft Office, whence it spread like a bad cliche to become corporate America’s eternal parody of itself.
The idea behind presentation software is simple: string together lecture notes in a series of simple “slides” which summarize one’s presentation with lockstep precision. This provides a comfortable safety net for a frightened speaker, but masks mediocrity in fundamental ways and can absolutely quell interaction and questions. With animations and transitions to keep the audience from dozing, such “presentations” have the appearance of a well-prepared lecture, but in substance are closer to infomercials: poorly produced, shoddily written and only vaguely observed by their “target audience” of jades or rubes.
By cutting cheesy sound effects, using better fonts and transitions, Apple’s new Keynote software solves some but not all of the problems presentation software is prone to. In the most damning four-word critique in recent memory, Steve Jobs once said of Microsoft that “they have no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way.” For those who have had to sit through various PowerPoint slideshows, Keynote drives this point home in half a dozen clicks, eschewing such drivel as the “auto-content wizard” for more precise placement tools and encouraging the user to think more on their own.
The essential idea of prescriptive, lockstep, communication from cloaked speaker to passive audience is preserved, though, and all the taste in the world does not change this fact: assertion is not engagement and lecture is not learning. The publishing of assertions does not make them true.
That being said, Keynote is available for $100, and can handily import most PowerPoint presentations from others. As importantly, Keynote can export in the PowerPoint format, making Steve’s good taste (he was chief beta tester) look remarkably like yours to the uninitiated. For those who prefer to work in a Microsoft-free environment, PowerPoint also exports handily to cross-platform PDF and presentations can be saved as QuickTime movies for export to CD or onto VHS videotape.
Those interested in learning more about the mechanics of Keynote are encouraged to sign up for this spring’s class at Mac Camp while those interested in the ethical issues of PowerPoint are encouraged to read Ian Parker’s New Yorker article “Absolute PowerPoint” in the issue of May 28, 2001.
Rory Bowman, rory@pmug.org
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