MWSF 2003 - Apple Announces Keynote Presentation App

by , 3:30 PM EST, January 7th, 2003

Apple today announced Keynote, a new presentation application for Mac OS X. Used by Steve Jobs for the past year, Keynote is designed to do slide shows, business presentations, and more. From the press release:

Apple® today unveiled Keynote, a new generation of presentation software that brings the ability to create stunning, professional-quality presentations to everyone. Featuring Apple's legendary ease of use, Keynote includes professionally designed themes, amazing typography, pro-quality image resizing, animated charts and tables that can be created in seconds, and cinematic-quality transitions. Available immediately for $99 (US), Keynote imports and exports PowerPoint, QuickTime® and PDF files to make creating and sharing presentations easier than ever.

"Using Keynote is like having a professional graphics department to create your slides," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "This is the application to use when your presentation really counts."

Keynote includes 12 Apple-designed themes featuring coordinated backgrounds, fonts, colors, bullets, tables and charts. Users can change the theme of their presentation any number of times, modify an existing theme to their liking, or create custom themes to give their presentations a totally unique look.

Keynote makes it easy to create impressive charts and tables in seconds. Users can choose from eight flexible chart types, progressively disclose chart and table information, and create unique animations, shadows and labels on any chart or table. Chart and table data can be imported from applications such as Excel and AppleWorks® or organized directly in Keynote?s Chart Data Editor.

Keynote is available immediately for US$99 and was given out to keynote attendees for free. For more information, visit Apple's Keynote Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Keynote appears to be an amazing presentation tool. Although the comparisons will be drawn to PowerPoint, we believe Apple has gone above and beyond the standard Office presentation tool. With Quartz graphics, cool transitions, and professional themes, Keynote will make presentations look far more polished than any PowerPoint presentation we've ever seen. Plus, with Steve Jobs' personal "I used it for all Macworld keynotes last year" endorsement, how could you go wrong? We think Keynote will be a Big Deal™ for Apple, and a great benefit to their bottom line.

It will be interesting to see Microsoft's reaction to Keynote. The company has always taken *very* seriously any threat to Office. Though PowerPoint is not the main part of Office, it is still a part. Clearly Apple isn't worried about whatever reaction may come out of Big Redmond, either because the company already knows MS doesn't care, or because Apple doesn't care.

Apple Keynote Web Page