[Love Calm Quiet]

So: how do Steve & Co. pull off what shows on-screen in his presentations?

As I recall, Apple created its Keynote software for Steve to use in his own presentations (talk about designing for a demanding customer!).
Anyway, I actually watched the entire 90 minutes last night - since I'm starting to have to make more presentations professionally/sales-type. I've been planning to get 2010 iWorks (assuming announced soon) for latest version of ‘Keynote’ - never having condescended to learn MS PointlessPower.

Anyway, can anyone here say whether any/all of the dynamic effects (like the word 'iPad' crashing down and causing a dust splash) can be created with current (2009?) Apple Keynote software? ...or must I go to something from Adobe?

—an aspiring self-trained graphics noob

PS: Was Steve actually mirroring his iPad onto the screen? Seemed to me that the screen often display an iPad operating dynamically *and* having its hardware edges display on screen - which a simple mirroring to projector could not achieve. Or do you think that they mirrored to another iPod and then had a live camera on it?

PPS: I'm hoping there'll soon be a Missing Manual or such for a 2010 Keynote/iWorks, but I find no hint of it forthcoming at Amazon. Latest there about iW/KN is an MM for 2009 (Amazon.com: iWork '09: The Missing Manual (9780596157586): Josh Clark: Books) - and they don't update the manual each year.
Do those of you who use Keynote think it so intuitive that it answers all question through its interface, or is a manual required to ferret out the less common effects?

[mdc]

This and this are the closest I can get to the $499 that crashes down on the $999 and shatters it.

Obviously there are better sound effects out there and you could get everything timed better than I did in the few minutes I spent on this.

As for the dust that's either in iWork '10 or they did it with an image and then made it grow.

[imitchellg5]

There won't be a 2010 edition of iWork or iLife. Apple removed the '09 badge a few months ago from the boxes of both app suites. The theme is the standard Gradient theme, but with Myriad Pro as the font. Most of the effects are built in.

The iPad was mirrored onto the screen.

[tooki]

Most likely, they were using a prerelease of a future version of Keynote, as they've done many, many, many times in the past.

Despite this, if you pay attention, most of the slides change with no transition at all. And the most important points are made with the simplest slides.

I like Keynote -- hell, I love Keynote and have since day 1 -- but you can do fantastic presentations in PowerPoint, too. It's 5% technology and 95% skill. (I delivered great presentations with PowerPoint 98 that people couldn't even figure out how I did.)

Do a search for posts by me about presentations, I've written about this before.

As for the iPad screen image: the iPad does mirroring out of the box. As with prior iPhone/iPod touch demos, the mirrored screen output of the device is fed into a high-end video switcher/effects compositor that shows the live image in a picture of the device over the standard gradient background. I can't say with any conviction whether the rotation is done by hand or by some automatic integration with the device software, though I lean towards the former.

[subego]

Originally Posted by tooki 

It's 5% technology and 95% skill.

100% agreed.

As cliche as it sounds, When it comes to PP, less is more. Seriously.

Seriously.

[JKT]

In my opinion, the big difference between Keynote and PowerPoint is that, for the 95% who don't have any skill and are depending on that 5% of technology to work magic for them, Keynote wins hands down. Although it isn't impossible to produce shockingly bad slides with it (I've seen a fair few), because the starting point is truly elegant themes and well designed templates it takes more effort to get it badly wrong than it otherwise would. PowerPoint, on the otherhand, offers no help whatsoever. People with no presentation or aesthetic talent are doomed from the minute they start using it.

Further to tooki's point though, we had a presentation at work recently where the speaker didn't use either. He just talked and it was one of the best presentations I've attended in a very long time. That is, having some narrative skill is far more important for a good presentation than the text and imagery you can dump onto a slide.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Originally Posted by JKT 

Further to tooki's point though, we had a presentation at work recently where the speaker didn't use either. He just talked and it was one of the best presentations I've attended in a very long time. That is, having some narrative skill is far more important for a good presentation than the text and imagery you can dump onto a slide.

Yes... I certainly get that. That point is well brought home by Carmine Gallo's new "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" (Amazon.com: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (9780071636087): Carmine Gallo: Books), but the visuals part of it has always been a dry place for me, so I appreciate everybody's suggestions there, too.

Shame about no 2010 version of iWork, however. Maybe they put most of their energy into creating the iPad versions for this year?