The Mac has a native application in iWork, its office suite, called Keynote.
It is most 'famous' for being the presentation software that everyone thought was PowerPoint in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Al Gore toured with his laptop and would update his presentation on the road as he travelled, so the story goes.
Now, what you see in the documentary may be one of Keynote's big selling points - it tends to look fluid, simple, and almost cinematic.
The big question becomes, what do you want to do with your tool?
PowerPoint has an enormous installed base - most Windows office machines, and a good proportion of Mac machines running Microsoft Office. So if interoperability is what you want - PowerPoint is a good first choice.
Just watch out for the different PowerPoint versions - you'll suddenly be knee-deep in right-clicks if you start mixing versions and charts.
I have to vote (with some reservations) that if you want elegance, Keynote has an edge. As a relatively new Mac user, I have come to appreciate the clicks I don't have to make on a Mac.
Usability, (once you get used to the different conventions) is greater on Keynote. To change the colour of a chart series in Powerpoint:
- Click on the chart- click again (carefully) to select the data series- select the Fill Tool- select a colour fro the main or sub-menus
To change the colour of a chart series in Keynote:
:have the Colour Inspector open- drag the colour you want over the data series and drop it!
In the first round - there you have it. A standalone show does well on Keynote. In fact, you can export it as a movie, and the Mac handles this really well.A show that needs to move around from machine to machine would tend to be PowerPoint. That is, if you refuse to use OpenOffice (more on that in another article!)
