
Apple built Keynote because Steve Jobs hates PowerPoint - rjim86
http://sachin.posterous.com/apple-built-keynote-because-steve-jobs-hates
======
arn
As noted in the comments of the article, Jobs was a big fan of Concurrence
which was developed on the NeXT platform by Lighthouse Design.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_Design>

Wikipedia also says that's what he used: _Prior to using Keynote, Jobs had
used Concurrence, from Lighthouse Design, a similar product which ran on the
NeXTSTEP and OpenStep platforms_

Jobs spoke highly of Lighthouse design during the 1997 WWDC video that was
circulating around recently. Keynote was inspired by Concurrence. People
noticed the similarities right away:
[http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=218463&postco...](http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=218463&postcount=33)

~~~
btilly
In fact at one point Apple threatened a patent lawsuit against Sun, and Sun
responded by pointing out that they could easily sue over how similar Keynote
was to Concurrence. Neither lawsuit ever got filed. See
[http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/former-sun-ceo-
schwartz-d...](http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/former-sun-ceo-schwartz-
discusses-apple-lawsuits-and-microsoft-royalty-demands-20100310/) for
verification.

~~~
rbanffy
Sigh... Imagine if McNeally decided to base his Office-killer on Lighthouse's
codebase instead of StarOffice...

It could have actually killed Office.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Sadly no it couldn't.

Office's dominance or otherwise isn't down to functionality, it's down to
corporate habit, compatibility, user familiarity and a big ol' dose of FUD
about using something different.

Until you find a way to deal with those for major corporate clients you could
produce the best productivity suite in the whole world and you still wouldn't
shift Office.

~~~
Steko
Strongly disagree here. Functionality wise, Office (read Excel and Word)
murdered everything else in the early-mid 90s.

There are certainly other reasons that contributed greatly to Office's
monopoly but I don't see FUD as one of any consequence.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I'm not saying that's how it got where it is, I'm saying that's one of the
things that's keeping it there.

------
bambax
Everybody hates PowerPoint, and every version is worse than the previous one.
For example, n PPT 97 you could adjust shapes but in '2000 and later versions
they line up "automatically", meaning that when you move one it gets off the
grid and it's subsequently impossible to realign it by hand.

But there is a good competitor to PowerPoint in MS Office: Visio. Visio is a
great, powerful, professional piece of software, feature-rich and not that
hard to learn.

According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visio> Visio first
shipped in 1992; but it doesn't say if there ever was a Mac version. Was
there?

~~~
JonnieCache
OS X already has a better visio:
<http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/>

~~~
protomyth
No, no it doesn't. Visio is a much better product with decent templates,
preferences that stick, and shape arranging and editing that lets you get a
lot done. Scaling also works well in Visio and not so well in OmniGraffle.

I have used both a lot (Visio when it came on the sample disc before it was a
Microsoft product, OmniGraffle Pro since 1.0), and have finally given up on
the idea that OmniGraffle will be as good as Visio. I really wish Microsoft
would port it or someone else really look at the fundamentals of what Visio is
capable of.

------
tensor
Keynote would be absolutely amazing if it allowed for one thing: graphic/pdf
objects to be anchored inline with text. With this, latex rendered formula
could be included in a far easier manner.

Most CS academics use macs at this point, and I'm sure engineers would find it
invaluable as well. Apple has been ignoring its more technical users and
focussing on the the masses for a while now. It's rather disappointing.

~~~
bonzoesc
I disagree. Most slides benefit from having less content on them. A better way
to jam different kinds of content together on one slide really doesn't help
your viewers.

And you can be disappointed in Apple focusing on consumers, but you can't say
it's not working for them.

~~~
juiceandjuice
You obviously have no frame of reference to this conversation. This isn't
Hawking writing to the masses, he's talking about technical presentations.

~~~
bonzoesc
My frame of reference is that most academic technical presentations are bad,
just like most software produced during university research is bad to the
point of being impossible to run anywhere else.

You may feel that the information in a single slide with three formulas and a
few bullets of prose makes it worth the effort to put up with a bad slide, but
that doesn't make it a good slide by any means.

------
flomo
Forget Keynote, the video reminded me of how influential the PowerBook G4 has
been. "Sex" is right - the MB Pro on my desk still shares the same basic
design as its predecessor from 10 years ago. It has become timeless, like the
original ThinkPad design.

~~~
bonaldi
ish. The MB is based on the aluminium PBG4 which was bigger and rather less
good-looking than the TiBook. But the TiBook's painted kept flaking off, and
that wasn't sexy in the slighest

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alexophile
"Apple built Keynote because _everyone_ hates PowerPoint."

------
mahrain
From what I know Steve used to do his NeXT presentations in Lighthouse
Design's Concurrence, and he continued to use an OpenStep machine well into
his return to Apple.

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davidmat
"PowerPoint is by far the worst app in the Microsoft Office suite"

Really? I nominate MS Word for that title. Maybe we should hold a poll :)

~~~
zarify
I'd be going for Publisher. Even the Office addicts at work hate Publisher.

I think PowerPoint is bad just because People think that Other People will be
impressed by superfluous animation and other shinies. They don't think back to
the time someone last presented them with a crappy PP preso with far too much
animation. (Oh and I'm sick of helping kids at work re-encode to WMV so they
can embed movies in it :/)

~~~
huxley
+1 googolplex. I hate Publisher with the fiery passion of a thousand burning
suns.

------
ktarnowski
This is a good example of what happens when a driven person finds a problem
that, in his opinion, needs fixing. In this case Steve Jobs, who's famous for
his keynotes, speeches etc., found that existing solutions do not suit his
needs and, what's more important from the business perspective, there's a
bunch of people who feel the same. So, as a brilliant entrepreneur, he made
the Keynote happen.

------
krashidov
I don't think powerpoint is all that bad.

It's people who don't know how to present is what makes it look bad.
Especially when they fill the screen with every single word they say.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
It's a fair point but ideally a presentation application should do everything
it can to make you look good.

PowerPoint's issue is that it doesn't look great to start with which is one of
the reasons people try to "sex up" their presentations which is where all the
crap starts appearing.

If PowerPoint produced better looking presentations as standard (essentially
had better templates which still, even in the latest versions it doesn't),
people might have less reason to give free reign to their stupidity.

~~~
kenjackson
I disagree. The problem with PowerPoint templates is that everyone has them.
When you see a PowerPoint presentation your first thought is, "this is a
PowerPoint presentation -- I know that template".

With that said, I think PowerPoint is actually really good. And most
presentations surprisingly good. In fact, I tend to think people tend to do a
better job with their PowerPoint presentations than they do the actual paper
that goes with it. The spend more effort distilling their thoughts down to
what really matters, rather than endless exposition.

I just think its become trendy to hate on PowerPoint.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I disagree.

I've got Office 2011 for the Mac and Office 2010 for Windows. One of the first
things I did was go and look to see if they'd improved the templates and they
simply aren't very good.

I agree that people get bored of seeing the same ones over and over but that's
part of the same problem - with so few good choices people all migrate around
the small number of least bad options.

As for it being trendy to hate on PowerPoint, I don't know who you hang out
with but talking about any presentation software in any terms isn't trendy
among people I see... I get that certain views become fashionable but I don't
think PowerPoint is the sort of thing that people round on in that way, it's a
bit to "meh" to generate a bandwagon.

~~~
kenjackson
_I agree that people get bored of seeing the same ones over and over but
that's part of the same problem - with so few good choices people all migrate
around the small number of least bad options._

I don't think that's the issue. Most people use the themes availabe in the
design tab. That's it. I've shown people how there are more than a thousand
templates available from the file menu and almost everybody says, "Oh, I
didn't know about those!".

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Maybe it's just me but I've reviewed a couple of hundred and saw nothing I'd
want to use in preference to the ones people always use.

In any case, even if it's true that they're hidden away so people find them
whose fault is that?

The whole reason MS changed the UI to include the ribbon was that every time
they asked people about new features they should include they were given ideas
for things Office already did so the idea was to make things easier to find.
Maybe it's time they did something for templates.

------
temphn
Keynote's one minor-but-annoying limitation is that you can't change default
parameters globally for animations.

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cantbecool
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU>

The second video in the original posters link, the Titanium Powerbook
unveiling, Jobs had a lot of spunk compared to the most recent unveilings.

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warmfuzzykitten
Ok, Concurrence, but the name "Keynote" certainly is suggestive.

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kitsune_
Is that Comic Sans?

~~~
sjwright
One Stroke Script.

<http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?productid=173302>

