PowerPoint annoyances
These days I tend to prepare talks and lectures using two main bits of software; for lectures to undergraduates, I use beamer (a LaTeX based style for producing PDF presentations), and for seminars on my own work I use Keynote. So, it’s been along time since I’ve had to fire up PowerPoint in anger. However, I’ve recently had to produce a talk in PowerPoint (for boring and complicated reasons), and the experience has reminded me why I fled to Keynote’s open arms.
It’s true that Keynote doesn’t have all the features of PowerPoint. The drawing tools included in Keynote are very simple, but I just use OmniGraffle which works beautifully and is dedicated to producing graphics. You can either copy and paste graphics in, or import them, so it’s very little extra hassle. There are also fewer options for building animations (though this has improved with the latest release), but I can’t say that I find that a problem.
