It’s now been a few days since the October Apple keynote announcing new products and services. Much to many Keynote presentation software users’ initial delight, Keynote 6 was announced, almost five years after the last significant update.
I write “initial” because for many, to judge from Apple’s own discussion support groups, and others on Yahoo, this update feels retrograde, with too many existing elements cast out, and insufficient hoped-for new features added.
Indeed, some expected they could open their existing and in some cases very complex Keynote 5 files and expect them to somehow be transformed magically into something ethereal. Or at least just work.
I did this too, only to watch a shopping list roll down before my eyes, of missing builds replaced by a default “dissolve”, missing transitions – ditto – and missing fonts.
This of course was the same experience I “enjoyed” when I opened Keynote on the iPad the first time in July, 2010, again with the hope of full compatibility.
When that didn’t happen, and another year went by with no upgrade to Keynote (but numerous updates to the iOS version), Apple’s intentions for iWork became clear.
So, before you go installing iWork – actually the three apps that used to be referred to as iWork – please bear the following thoughts I have previously cast on this blog in mind. And then I’ll make some recommendations. Don’t rush in – I did before the free update for iWork DVD installed apps actually became free (it took about 24 hours after the October keynote), and paid $40 for Pages 5 and Keynote 6.
On this blog, I have suggested, not based on insider knowledge, but a long time user and observer, that Keynote 5 would not receive an update until there could be parity between iOS and Mac OS versions.
With the A7 chip and Mavericks, and the maturing of the “iWork in the cloud” beta, that has come about. It’s a distinct poke in the eye to Microsoft and we long term power users of Keynote are the poker. We have been sacrificed on the alter of “progress”, parity, and another nail in the Microsoft hegemony/monopoly/”we control the vertical – we control the horizontal” – attitude to the consumer.
But I also predicted much gnashing of teeth from said Keynote users would parallel our colleagues in the Final Cut Pro sector who had hoped for further evolution of their professional “It pays the bills” software, only to be rendered (ahem!) Final Cut X. For some it felt as if an iMovie Pro had been thrown at them: They were insulted as power users. The same can be now said to be happening to Keynote power users, who’ve been with the program for a decade.
Many in the Final Cut Pro world of course left for seemingly greener grass and the open arms of Adobe and Avid, who facilitated this unexpected gift from the gods. But those who stayed with the Apple program have apparently received their reward as FCP X has matured, and now we see it matched to the Mac Pro. One can reason with some predictability that the same iterative process will happen with Keynote given how well it had been selling on both desktop and iOS devices, and especially for the latter, the generation of schoolchildren with iPads who will never touch Powerpoint.
For now, I am following my own advice:
1. Install KN 6 (and Pages 5) on the Mavericks partition on my Macbook Air (Haswell). Do not install on the Mountain Lion/Keynote 5 partition. KN6 does not work under ML. (I have a developer license for Mavericks). Make sure your Time Machine has been put to good use.
2. Duplicate mission critical keynote files and transfer them to the Mavericks partition, and convert them to KN6 and see the tragedy that unfolds…. dissolve, dissolve, dissolve…
2a. IMPORTANT: If you have installed Mavericks on a single partition and now have KN6 and KN5 on the same hard drive as your KN5 files, don’t double click these files to work on them. They will open in KN6, which will try to convert them. If you want to work on them in KN5, rather than play in KN6, first open KN5 then either use the “Open…” menu item or drag the files you wish to use onto the KN5 icon in the dock.
Mavericks sees KN6 as the default for ALL Keynote files. You’ve been warned.
3. See if some of my proudest achievements in Keynote can be fixed in KN 6 (e.g. shaking book) or at least repaired or even improved; hey, you never know. (Have Kleenex tissue at the ready). Update: there are improvements to be made, and even less clicking in some cases. I will post later how I fixed and improved the Shaking book effect. I do believe Apple was inspired by it via the inclusion of a new “jiggle” effect, as well as a new “pulse” build.
4. Explore which of my third party KN stuff, from developers like Jumsoft, etc., remain compatible, including motion background themes (QT looping) movies. Monitor their websites for signs of life.
UPDATE: Sadly for now, Quicktime movies with transparent backgrounds which I like to use a lot are currently broken. Much unhappiness in the 3rd party add-on industry over this. For many, this will mean staying with Keynote 5 not just to keep doing what they’ve been doing, but even for creating new presentations from scratch. If you open these same files with their transparent QT movies in KN5 in Mavericks, they work. Below, an example of a beating heart from Jumsoft, and what happens in KN6.
5. Check out how my helper apps may have been affected, e.g. Doceri for annotating slides, and whiteboarding in Keynote. UPDATE: Doceri is fine – phew! OTOH, Animationist with its beautiful titling effects, will suffer for the same reasons as listed in 4., above: transparency loss.
6. Keep reading blogs and Apple discussion lists for hidden gems (yeah, right! Much gnashing of teeth currently. Most major websites such as Ars Technica, iMore, CNet currently all carry mainly strongly negative “what were they thinking/smoking” jibes at Apple’s iWork engineering team.
7. Watch for KN 6.0.1 to address some of the shortcomings, bugs, etc. This has got to be a long term process and will surely test many long term users resolve. Prezi will welcome them, some will return to the bosom of Powerpoint (“The herd may stink, but at least it’s warm”) while some like me will divvy the work between KN5 and KN6 in the short term.
8. Stick with my day job as a clinical psychologist, and presentation skills trainer where even current KN on the iPad is better than how most use Powerpoint on the desktop – seriously. That’s not to say Powerpoint on Windows doesn’t have a hugely impressive feature set – it does. But 95% of presentation only ever use 5% of its capabilities – in other words, dull, or replete with the most awful “art text”.
9. My guidance to you: If you’re doing mission critical presenting right now, stay with KN 5 even on Mavericks. Only if you’re starting a new project from scratch, or have the time and energy to update your older files to KN6 (and learn what repairs you’ll need to do), do you employ KN6.
10. There are some immediate disappointments. I am unhappy to lose the Fall transition; the lack of a timeline for precision build timings appalls; while item grouping has improved (more on this in a later blog article), multiple grouped items are all still named “Group”, making it difficult to navigate busy files with numerous groups needing to be layered. Smart builds, like those rotating turntables and object swapping has been dropped. The Keynote engineering team were always disappointed in their take-up, even though they had a huge splash when Steve Jobs first showed us the iPhone. Remember the spinning elements: “It’s an iPod; it’s a phone; it’s an internet communicator – are you getting it yet?”, created with Smart Builds.
UPDATE: The loss of hyperlinking within a KN file, and between KN files is for me, a serious one. It will change some of my conceptualisation of knowledge transfer, and my attempts to be more immediate and less linear in my teaching.
One must remember that KN1 initially did not have hyperlinking, and it made its first appearance many years later. It’s not the most used of its features to judge from Keynote workshops I have conducted; of course, after I showed what it could do in terms of audience engagement, I’m sure many explored it further. I do expect it to return in a KN6 update.
FURTHER UPDATE: It’s there in KN6. But buried. I am working on a new blog article about it.
11. Slide editing of Quicktime movies remains the same: Imprecise, and only one “In” and “Out” point for each movie. I would have hoped how movies can be edited on the iPhone might have made its way into Keynote, but it will surely come later.
So, in summary, it’s not the gee whiz, pull out all the stops, show us what you can really do Apple upgrade starved Keynote artists had been hoping for after five years. Our imaginations filled the void, ignoring where Apple is making its money, with iOS devices.
But now that we see a road ahead, powered by A7 chips in iOS devices which will no longer be referred to as toys, or media consumption devices (go back and rewatch the Apple video showing the diversity of iPad uses which starts with the wind energy generators), these content creation devices will drive Keynote further.
There may be a surprise awaiting us with a Keynote Pro with a look and feel of Apple’s Pro software like Final Cut X and Aperture (we can dream), but for now there is a workflow for power users, and that is to keep doing what you’re doing with Keynote 5, and find the time to play with Keynote 6 and become curious and explorative. There are some hidden surprises I will blog about soon.
Les Posen's Presentation Magic 
I made the rather naive and rash decision to delete all iWork 09 apps after installing the new versions. Then I discovered that any Keynote file I had from versions earlier than 09 would no longer open. And, of course, you can’t download iWork 09 anymore.
Thank heavens for Time Machine. After I retrieved all three iWork 09 programs, I used “All Files” in the finder to list every Keynote file on my computer. There were 371 of them going all the way back to 2003 (I was an early Keynote adopter).
I opened up every file that had a date older than 2009 in Keynote 09. I quickly inserted a text box and then immediately deleted it. That was enough to count as an edit, though I didn’t actually change anything. The autosave feature in Keynote 09 automatically saved every file in the 09 version.
So, now I will attempt to see if my more complex files work in the new Keynote. If not, at least there’s always Time Machine to bring back any file that gets changed.
Must be disappointing to loose some of your favourite transitions or builds. I myself am quite happy with the new Keynote. This is what i gained:
-more elegant shadows (contact, curved etc.)
-connectors which finally allow me to draw an org chart in Keynote
-boolean operators on shapes
-ease in/out for magic move
-(some, forget fireworks) elegant new builds
My wish list:
-ability to save newly created shapes in a library
-ability to distort not just shapes, but also pictures (and have elegant reflections and shadows for those)
Regards,
Ronald
Your blog has been a life-saver/gold mine over the years. You have a much more measured and probably more adult view than I. I worry that by the time Keynote finally regains its former usefulness, I may well be beyond my golden years and probably beyond caring. I worry that the old Keynote will break at some future OS update and I will be forced back to Powerpoint. I would really appreciate some real guidance from Apple on iWork’s future.
I and many others share your pain, or part of it.
Much of Steve Jobs’ personality remains within Apple, especially Keynote which was his baby from the NeXT days.
Jony Ive’s influence in iOS has transferred into Keynote for desktop OS too, not surprisingly. It remains to be seen how his design chops influence how we do presentations given he refuses to get on stage and present himself. Design only gets you so far when you present to a live audience. Do crap slides in Powerpoint delivered by a brilliant orator do better or worse with an audience than brilliant Keynote slides delivered by a non engaging speaker?
If we use final cut X as a model then I remain optimistic of Keynote’s survival and growth.
I’ll play more and offer further thoughts in the next few days.
Les
Roger Rosner was at Lighthouse Design the original developers of Concurence.app. So you don’t need to worry about that.
This issue seems to be parity with Cloud, iPad and Mac version.
Now if you want Keynote Pro then you should see WWDC 2013 video
for “What’s New in SceneKit”, session 500.
The entire presentation was done using SceneKit.
But I doubt Keynote Pro is coming for any price.
At least you are not depending on Pages which lost all of the page layout feature. and I doubt Jony Ives had a chance to mess with iWork or Maverick just yet. That is next year.
Very insightful and useful comment, which many visitors and I will surely follow up.
Ta; Les
Quick Links for those that are interested:
This is the link to she Session Videos page for 2013
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/videos/ search for “SceneKit”
The sample code from that SceneKit presentation is here:
http://developer.apple.com/downloads/
Look under
WWDC 2013 Sample Code for
OS_X_SceneKit_Slides_WWDC2013
Watching these videos requires a Developer’s license. Let’s just say without breaching Apple’s NDA under which one can view and download these videos from WWDC 2013 (in SD and HD), that if a third of what SceneKit in Mavericks can do is managed or made available in Keynote 6 in future updates, we have some Wow! wow! wow! stuff on its way.
Prior to Mavericks being released, they required the paid access (that version of Xcode also required paid access). So, between June and now, you’d have had to pay the $99 fee. However, upon release, they make the information available to anyone who signs up for an account, like me (and summarily lock down any info on 10.10 🙂
So I’m paying $99 to have an NDA peak under her skirts, so to speak?
Can you please confirm if files created in Keynote 5 will open in the new format? I have dozens of presentations that I don’t want to lose. Thanks.
They will, but will be converted to kn6 format and may lose some of their previous functionality.
I don’t understand your hyperbole about this new version. I updated all three iWork apps via the Mac App Store. All three original iWork `09 apps were retained on my hard drive, and work fine… no partitions needed.
What I said was, I would be following my own advice, and since I had already created a mavericks partition on my MacBook Air during its pre release development phase since WWDC, I left it there to keep the two versions of Keynote separate. One to play with kn6 and other apps in mavericks, the other to use when I did my presentations.
I don’t think its unusual when one’s experimenting with a prerelease OS to partition one’s hard drive. It’s something you can’t do with a prerelease of iOS on your phone or iPad.
If it looked like I was encouraging readers to follow my lead here, that would certainly be hyperbole and overly cautious. But as you may have noted having both new and old versions of kn on the one hard drive can be problematical when it comes to opening older mission critical files. The system defaults under Mavericks to kn6. Knowing that may save some people grief.
Les
Documents made with iWork ’08 won’t open any of Keynote, Pages, or Numbers, a real poke in the eye for users who skipped iWork ’09 and then bought the new versions, hoping for some improvement. There’s no free upgrade from iWork ’08.
NDA suppose to expire after Mavericks is released.
Developer account is free.
You may ask your apple exec to see if you can blog about it.
SceneKit mostly applies to future Motion 6 and 3D UIs.
New Keynote has new physics engine probably copied from SpriteKit.
and object graph. so it might already have light weight version
built in.
Developer account is free? I paid $99 for….? The presentation of SceneKit was apparently eponymously performed, if you get me drift. IOW, a “Keynote Pro” is certainly well within Apple’s realm.
I have the free account. $99 is if you want to sell iOS apps
and get to test beta software.
any decent developer like Omni or Delicious Monster could use
SceneKit to give you Pro app but who is going to pay for it.
SceneKit is Mac only because double precision floating point (64 bit)
and only will come to ARM64 processors. and will definitely not come
to Browser unless code is ported Javascript, WebGL and WebCL.
I doubt Apple wants to support WebCL in safari because of security issues.
Question really is do you really want 3D font, lighting and objects flying around especially for a presentation software which purports to be simpler than Powerpoint and how does 3D UI translate to PDF export.
I only mention about blogging just to see what caught your eye and
what would be useful in a presentation software but as visualization for 3d scientific purposes it would be spectacular but most users don’t need it.
As a prototype tool Quartz Composer is also spectacular but Keynote doesn’t support it and nor does Keynote take DAE files which is bases for SceneKit loading complex 3d models.
Hi everyone, my sad experience with Mavericks is that the only way to sync now is to use iCloud which caused my Calendars to disappear and Address Book to hang. After 5 hours on the phone with the Apple helpline, my MBP is limping along, though the Cakandar function is still not working and I have three duplicate iCloud accounts on my MBP( have disabled but cannot remove two).
Had no issues opening KN5.3 files but my KN6 somehow does not allow changes to the slide template, though the Inspector seems built for it. Lots of fruitless clicking.
As an Apple fan and advocate for the past 28 years, I am sad and ashamed at how things are degenerating after the untimely departure of Steve Jobs.
TEXT HYPERLINK –
Actually it is easier to text hyperlink than the past version.
– Go to your slide and paste the url
– Dialog box comes up for editing “display” text (this is where you type the linked word of phrase to appear on the slide).
Done.
Not sure about images.
Help! I have Keynote 2.02 ( I know, it’s old.) I just retired my PowerBook G4 (I know, it’s old.), upgraded to Mavericks on a new PowerBook and now I can’t open any of my Keynote presentations. These presentations are my livelihood. How do I open them with the new Keynote? I’m prompted to convert them with a different version of Keynote? Any ideas? Help!!!
Thanks!
You’ll need to first obtain iWork 09 with Keynote 5, to open your old documents. Don’t convert them with the latest edition of Keynote, or you will likely break some of the builds and transitions.
Les
I always have mission-critical .keys in process. KN6 was a nightmare for existing work and made doing new work harder, e.g. no copying a shape to a spacing pattern. Deleted KN6. Happy again.
On reflection, Powerpoint95 was an amazing polyline engine that Microsoft broke in 97 and never repaired. Sad to see Apple repeating MSs errors.
I’m a digital communications consultant, and one of my contract jobs is to develop and maintain looping, kiosk-style presentations that run continuously on large HD monitors in a university setting. A few years ago, I switched from PowerPoint to Keynote–then the Work 07 or 08 version—specifically because in addition to having better transitions and stylistic elements, that version of Keynote had an XML-based feature called “webview” that enabled Keynote to display live web pages, updated in real time, directly on presentation slides.
Since some of the slides link to web pages that contain schedules and calendar information that changes on a daily or weekly basis, this webview feature is essential to these kiosk-style presentations. Another example is a webview slide labeled “The Sun Today” that uses a webview link to a web page that displays near-real-time images of our sun, beamed to Earth by the NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory.
Apple removed the webview feature from the Keynote 5.x (iWork 09) UI, but the code was still there, and webview slides copied from older presentations and pasted into Keynote 5.x still work properly. I keep a single webview-slide Keynote presentation around for use as a template to create new Keynote 5.x presentations that include the webview functionality.
However, in the “new and improved” Keynote 6, Apple has removed this webview code completely. So, if I open one of my Keynote 5 webview presentation files in Keynote 6, a dialog box pops up noting that Keynote will remove all webview links in the presentation…among other things. Thus, for the time being, I have both Keynote 5 and Keynote 6 installed on my new Retina MacBook Pro, running OS X Mavericks. And, the MacMini computers that are running my kiosk presentations are all using Keynote 5, running on OS X 10.6 or 10.7. So, they work just fine—as long as they keep running, and as long as I can use Keynote 5 to update these presentation files.
However, to the best of my knowledge, there is no other Mac-based presentation application, including PowerPoint 2011-Mac, that can display live web pages directly on presentation slides. In the Windows OS, there’s a PowerPoint add-on called “LiveView” that apparently provides similar functionality. But, at this point, switching to Windows would require a significant effort and cost. We would either have to replace our Mac Mini computers with Windows PCs that have MS Office/PowerPoint, plus LiveView, or we would have to purchase Windows emulators (VMware Fusion or Parallels) and MS Office-Windows to run windows with PowerPoint in emulation mode on the Mac Mini computers. And, I would have to port my Keynote presentations to PowerPoint, knowing that many of my slides containing complex builds won’t translate correctly and most, if not all my video will have to be converted from QuickTime to WMV—all in all, a gigantic headache.
If anyone knows of another solution for creating kiosk presentations with live web pages, I’d love to know about it!
Meanwhile, I would happily be willing to pay a premium price for a “Pro” version of Keynote that, like Final Cut Pro and Aperture (which I also use), is designed for use by professionals. But, at this point, it doesn’t appear that Apple is headed in that direction….
Bob Khan, I couldn’t have put it better myself if I tried !! I’m so disappointed that this feature is now missing. I can only reiterate your point……..if anyone knows of a solution, then please let us know.
This is the first time I hear about the WebView feature of Keynote, very useful, hope they restore it! And do post on the Apple website for support feature, the reports they receive, the higher the move on the priority list.
Does Keynote 6.0.1 fix this? And I’m interested to know what this update has fixed? It does appear to me that Apple had to roll out the new iWork suite (Keynote 6.0) unfinished, but to be inline with the hardware release date and Mavericks. Having synchronised new Macs (MacBook Pro, iPad Air), new OS and new software release is no trivial task. And the 6.0.1 seems the version they should’ve shipped (with cue that the update came so quickly).
Jack, the 6.01 update which came rapidly after the 6.0 major overhaul was probably in a different time trajectory than what happened, but because of the huge outcry from disappointed Keynote (and Pages) pro users, perhaps Apple acquiesced and we got the update much earlier. It re-introduced features which went MIA with the V6 update, which you are correct in writing was very much about parity with other formats, such as iOS devices and the web. Let’s hope we continue to see further enhancements (please: a sophisticated timeline and better layering and grouping options) in the not so distant future, esp with increasing power coming to the iOS devices.
Ta for your input,
Les
I recently replaced my 8-yeqr-old MacBook with an MacBook Air. I am unable to open any of my KN presentations, which are in KN3 (!). Luckily, I can still use my old computer, but I’d like to know if there is any way to convert these much older files.
Thanks!
Steve Weeks, DDS
You’ll need to locate a copy of Keynote 5 part of iWork 09 which ought to open Keynote 3 files. Then use keynote 6 to work with the new saved Keynote 5 files.
Les
Many thanks, Les!
Steve
Any comments on the version 6.1 released ~Jan 24th, 2014?
I’ve resisted upgrading thus far.
If you’ve held out this long, there was nothing significant about this point update that would convince you to move critical presentations over to v6.1. There was the return of a few transitions, and of course cloud password protection was the biggie.
On the other hand, I would strongly suggest you at least download and play with 6.1, say by opening a copy of a 5.3 mission critical presentation and seeing what the new version does to it. Are there critical builds or features that are lost, for which you must use 5.3? e.g. masked movies which prevents me from using hundreds of dollars of third party add ons
One of the deal-breakers for me is that I use LaTeXIt to drag PDFs of equations into the presentation. This is now broken, you have to either save to a file (or copy to clipboard and paste, which isn’t that bad I guess).
I also use the UnicodeIt service to replace text (type a hot key and it replaces \beta with β), but this is also broken with K6.1
What is status of path animations?
Kyle, it’s clear that your specific needs are beyond the rather pedestrian offerings Keynote 6.1 has for presentation pros. It may change in the future, but finding a workaround has always been the modus operandi of Keynote users since 2003! Path animations have improved considerably in 6 and I will do a little YouTube featurette to post here about it, in preparation for a demo at Macworld in March.
Les
I tell you what was significant in the last release: the newly updated remote control feature. Previously, you could use an iPhone or iPad as a remote control over wifi for a Keynote presentation running on a MacBook. The Keynote Remote App wasn’t very full featured. It had never been updated for the larger screen size of the iPhone 5, and running it on an iPad (which I often did) simply stretched the iPhone app to the larger size.
The Keynote App is no more. Delete it from your devices if you have it. The functionality is now built into the Keynote iOS apps. Last night I used it for the first time when teaching a college-level class. I had my MacBook Pro connected to the projector in the front of the room, but I was able to sit in the back behind my students and control the presentation from my iPad. I had full control and access to my presenter notes. It took full advantage of the retina screen of my iPad Air–quite nice!
Rick, they’ve clearly put some thought into better integration between their own apps for doing what you’ve described. Since its release I’ve used Doceri to do this, plus annotate slides, and Splashtop Presenter has a similar set of enhancements for pro presenters.
I expect we’ll see more of this kind of ramping up of Keynote on the desktop in the future.
Les
Unfortunately, I believe we may have lost the ability to use the remote for iOS to iOS control. There have been a number of times when I’ve not wanted to take my MacBook Pro with me. I would use Keynote on my iPhone, but control it from my iPad. I don’t believe we can do that with the current versions of Keynote, but maybe this will be added in later.
@thislamp – That’s not true. I’ve controlled a presentation on my iPad from my iPhone. On the iPad, you need to go into the presentation, then click Tools (the spanner) < Presentation Tools < Allow Remote Control < Enable Remotes. It'll then search for your phone. It took my Keynote a few goes to find my iPhone but once found, it connected without fail 🙂
I walk humbly into our midst, a mere low-information KN user of 5 years or so. I upgraded to Mavericks and KN 6.1. I opened previously made KN’s and mindlessly and happily said, “Sure!” to requests for conversion. I got what you said I’d get. So, I’ve now gone through these presentations, retooling, restoring and repairing where necessary.
I post to SlideShare, which won’t take my replacement KN’s the way they once did. Said they, “Make PDF’s and replace your older KN’s with those!” So, I try to make PDF of my converted presentation files and can’t do it. A little window opens up and says something to the effect, “You can’t save ‘filename’ to PDF as ‘filename’.” I’ve tried different feints and fakeouts but this little gatekeeper is insistent I can’t make PDF’s.
I posted on the Apple Support Group thingie and got some Apple people asking to see one of these files. I can’t attach them to an email, can’t upload them to DropBox. The file names claim to be ’empty’.
Any suggestions? I’ve gotten quite a (belated) education here and for that alone I say, “Thanks.” Anything by way of more pointed assistance would be received with cascading reveals of gratitude set to transparent backgrounds.
Lenny,
I took a ppt file, opened it in Keynote 6 (wait.. wait..), then used the File -> Export to -> PDF menu option and it worked fine – large file (22MB) compared to the original PPT of 20MB. That’s very unusual for PPT which usually measure in kb, but it was stacked full of high res pics from a paediatrician who’d read Presentation Zen recently 😉 What happened if youy try to print your Keynote files, and use the
“save as PDF” dialogue?
My good sir:
Sorry for the inattention to your prompt posting, but the flu has been ravaging my corner of the snow-bound deep woods.
Your procedure and my procedure(s) are exactly the same. I even tried the ‘save as PDF’ ruse form the print menu, too, with little success.
Today, however, I went and did it once more. I mean, someone on the net told me to, right? And everything worked splendidly!! I’m sorry I bothered you all with what must have been some transient digital poltergeist. I shall ‘Dobbie’ myself in a dark corner just in case the fault was mine, as it often is in these cases. Most of my wounds are self-inflicted burdens.
In the meantime, I’ve reopened KN5 and worked file from there to PDF status. I WILL continue to play with the latest version even as I treasure the predictability of the old.
I take it that “Presentation Zen” is a how-to-er for the KN set? Is it on Kindle or what would be the best way for me to access it?
Thanks again,
Your obedient servant,
Lenny Hoy
For everybody who is sick and tired of not being able to use custom fonts in their documents on their iOS devices I might have a solution.
I ran into similar problems and took this as my motivation to develop “AnyFont”. With this little app you are able to install all the fonts you need for your presentations on your iPhone or iPad. So when your are using Calibri in your presentation and get the error message after importing it on your iPad you can use AnyFont to install Calibri on your device which makes the error message go away and lets you use Calibri in your presentation.
Let me know how you like it!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/anyfont/id821560738?mt=8
I keep stumbling on these issues beyond Keynote and as a student I wouldn’t even consider myself a power user. I understand that Apple is downgrading it’s quality for the sake of simplicity OR just plain profit (downgrading for profit – kind of ironic), but abandoning the ones who helped build up the brand from the very beginning cannot be a good idea, or is it? I don’t know… And the worst thing is: What alternatives do we have?!
Hello
Here are the votes of The Netherlands.
In KN6 is an exported html file 30 times as big as the original file??!!?
In KN09 it was about the same.
Is there a solution?
Keynote is really great but they isolate themselve from their customers.
I do, what you said.
Work with KN09 and play with KN6.1
Willy
I read your review too late. I am screwed. I have a massive number of KN presentations to give next week, but after updating to the latest version, over half of my old images are GONE–and I do not even know where the inspector is and I am way too old to learn this crap all over again and again. I am teaching all week and just wanted to put finishing touches on my presentations and now they are ALL WORTHLESS and I have no idea how to fix them Thank you for letting me vent my frustration.
Can you locate KN 5.3 and see if it opens the files you’ve been working on? Hopefully, if it;s the latest KN6.2 you were given the option of upgrading but not saving your files. KN5.3 should be in an iWork folder in Applications.
My general advice, still, is to use KN6 for new presentations, and stay with KN5.3 for tried and true presentations, when it really counts. If you want to transition them to KN6, then first duplicate the file, and use the new file in KN6 and see how it’s treated. It may not be worth the effort to try to modify those files.
I am looking for a good reliable solution to presenting animated presentation on a website — have the HTML problems with Keynote been fixed? should I use a different format to HTML for providing a live web-page presentation? Should I use a 2-step process of using something like Camtasia to record the presentation that has been prepared in Keynote? Should I simply stay with Powerpoint and SlideShare??
Head to the App Store and look for Tumult Hype and see if it has the attributes you’re looking for.
The thing that’s the most annoying to me about all this… Is that Apple is a gazillion dollar business now… They could easily do all their legacy customers a solid and just fix all this. They could keep developing keynote 6 AND keynote 5… They could make a “Keynote Pro” that doesn’t work with iOS… cos real Pros don’t care about iOS… and just make a super kick ass OSX only version of Keynote that has everything that 5 has… Plus all the new super cool things that 6 has. Come on Apple… Just do it.
I have often inquired of Apple if a Pro version of Keynote may be in the works. But as an observer of apple, I can conclude it’s not.
And as WWDC showed us with Yosemite and iOS8, there will be increasing parity between apple soft wares especially as its lower powered hardwares ramp up with A8 chips. When the next iPads and iPhones are released with these new chip sets, I expect to see updated versions of iWork making product parity even closer.
It will require patience on the part of pro Keynote users, or a decision to move to another platform such as Prezi or the next version of PowerPoint. Tough choice, huh?
Les
Has anyone seriously tried to compose a professional-grade presentation, document or spreadsheet on the iOS versions of iWork?
It’s. a. freaking. nightmare.
Sure, you *could*… but why would you when you can do it ten times faster on OSX?
I think Apple has gone a little mad with the whole iOS/OSX integration handoff thing. Calendars, contacts, notes, reminders, iTunes and email? Fan-bloody-tastic.
Roll up your sleeves and get some serious work done apps like Pages, Keynote and Numbers? Silly beyond belief.
Having said all that, I will switch to Keynote 6, when they just get basic functions on parity with 5. Like full presenter notes size customisation; in both presenter display and compose/edit modes.
Agreed. If you have been with desktop Keynote from 2003 and have grown to enjoy its take on slide show construction, then its devolution in 2014 to KN6 is a great disappointment.
But I think Apple is also counting on all those young people for whom the iPad will be their central learning tool growing up with iOS Keynote and for whom PowerPoint is ancient history. That can only be the for the better as long as they apply great visual design rules to keynote’s use.
Once let loose on Keynote for iOS without their teachers’ interference they will be incredibly inventive especially when combined with iMovie.
So for many adults attuned to Keynote 5’s strengths and weaknesses, Keynote 6 right now has little to offer for itself.
But I do believe Apple much bigger plans. So yes, stay with 5, keep experimenting with 6 especially as Apple rolls back in old favourite features along with new elements, and let’s see where this all goes.
I remain confident it is still a better tool than most of what’s out there.
Les