The quick list for now is:

• Theme selector looks a bit different, and you can now scrub the slide layouts. It’s still not as handy as something like the Pages selector, but at least the scrubbing is nice. You can also resize the thumbnails up to 360×270 (we cracked open Keynote and checked. The downer is, this makes all 3rd party themes look blurry in the previews)
• New Inspector icons, slightly more…puffy
• Ability to require a password to open the file (this was a good idea in conjunction with iwork.com)
• Magic Move. This moves an object from ONE slide onto the next slide
• New Flash Bulbs object build
• New Text Transitions text on one slide into text on the next (Anagram, Shimmer, Sparkle, Swing)
• New Object effects appear to wipe all objects from a slide and then transitions seamlessly to the next slide (Object Push, Object Zoom, Perspective, Revolve)
• New object builds Flash Bulbs and Lens Flare
• New chart builds (Crane, Radial, Rotate, Rotate & Grow, Z Axis)
   
• New text align option for tables that puts numbers on the left and text on the right (we’re not sure how it works yet)
• Advanced Gradient fills. FINALLY. Multiple colors and radials.
• New Lines function-looks like they pulled a few of the fancy lines out of the picture frame function and into the Lines function.
• Up to 5 Header and Footer rows in tables (08 only had 1)
• Tables do not have Advanced Gradient fill
• New Cell formats (Duration, Numeral System and Custom)
• At least 2 new chart types (Mixed, 2-axis)
• New connector object for flow charting (select 2 objects then choose insert Connection Line)
• New rounded rectangle thought bubble shape
• All chart types now show as sub drop down under Object menu in tool bar
• New “Make Motion Path from Shape” function (select 2 shapes, one becomes the path, the other the object that moves on the path)
• Copying and pasting a chart from a saved Numbers document to a Keynote document links it (we tested it!). Changes to the Numbers document are available for syncing only after the document is saved again.

New in the prefs:

• Keynote files are no longer a package by default, you must choose that in the preferences (we assume this is so they upload properly to iwork.com)
• Ability to show WYSIWYG font previews in format menu
• New auto horiz and vertical grid lines every x pixels
• New “show relative spacing” and “Show relative sizes” option for Object spacing and sizing
• presenter display can now show Build markers. Little blue dots show how many builds and disappear when the build is complete
• While it doesn’t appear in the prefs, the new Presenter Display has a hidden bar that sits at the top of the presenter screen. Bump the top and it drops. In it are a slide selector button, a black button, an options menu (with several options including customize the view) and a help button. Clicking the Slide selector drops down a scrollable row of your slides. Double clicking a slide hides the bar and triggers the slide. This is much nicer than the old selector (and larger too)
• New Keynote Remote ability, ties in with .99 app in the App store. We bought it…for now, stick with StageHand, it’s WAY better, though it may not work with 09 yet)
• Auto Correct now adds ability to “automatically use spell checker suggestions) and they made the symbol and text substitution box larger so more items show in it.

(I apologize now for not putting any screens shots in here, but I may add them this week just to spice up the story)

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why the heck the owner of Keynoteuser.com would even take a glance at PowerPoint, and I can understand your concern. But I first jumped on Keynote because it seemed to inspire me, even though I wasn’t a presenter or even a presentation builder at the time. I just had to have the app and just had to play with it. PowerPoint never did that to me, and in fact usually made me curse at it every time I had to use it. The way text boxes seemed to have a mind of their own, forcing you to click on and off them any number of times to actually select JUST the box and not inside it. The annoying tool bar that just seemed to never be friendly and other little things.

PowerPoint 2004 brought some help, with soft drop shadows and better tools, but even then it had issues with PDF’s, and the only transparent image format supported was PNG (that may still be the case, I haven’t tested PPT 2008′s image import fully). The template system was still archaic and the whole app still pretty much looked like the same old PowerPoint it had always been.

Meanwhile, Keynote was growing and adding more features, with Keynote 4 adding motion path animation and other cool goodies (something, by the way, PowerPoint 2008 still doesn’t appear to have). But all the while, I’ve had this love/hate relationship with Keynote. There are still some things that Apple hasn’t addressed in it, like better audio support, cast shadows, perspective skewing with reflections that hold with it among others. Each version of Keynote gets closer to my “perfect” app, but it just seems like for every 2 or 3 new features Apple added that no one asked for, they forget another one that everyone DID ask for. With every release I hear myself saying, “cool, now the NEXT release will probably be perfect!” and of course each release always leaves me asking for more.

Enter PowerPoint 2008. No, it’s not perfect by any stretch. Heck, I fully expect to find a LONG list of gripes with it as I start to really dig into the app. But Keynote has pushed Microsoft to pay attention finally. PPT 2008 feels like a completely new app. The interface looks like it was ripped off of Keynote and modified slightly (with a few improvements I might add) but there are little things that are finally in PowerPoint that have been ignored for years before Keynote came along. A few of them are actually BETTER than Keynote.

Take shadows for example. Not only do you get soft drop shadows, but you can have shadows inside a shape, or the real kicker, CAST SHADOWS (PPT calls it Perspective shadow). That’s right, you can make an object appear to be floating over a floor with the shadow cast down onto the floor. Try that in Keynote. Earlier I mentioned the skew thing. You can click on several presets in the Formatting Palette that let you skew an image in perspective (I’m still trying to figure out if there’s a manual skew too though). I tested this and added a reflection on the skewed image…and it honored the perspective. In Keynote, even if you manage to skew an image and THEN import it into Keynote, when you add a reflection, it always reflects straight down and does NOT honor a perspective angle, because it doesn’t understand it (having not been skewed inside Keynote). If you’re trying to get depth on a slide, PowerPoint 2008 makes it easy (finally!). And of course, there are the old standards like the slide sorter, which unlike Keynote can be resized to more than just two sizes. And the template system has been overhauled, which brings with it some good and bad news.

As a Keynote theme builder, I often get e-mails asking me if my themes can be recolored. The newer ones actually CAN be recolored, but it’s not an obvious feature because of the way Keynote works. You have to manually change the background of a slide to an image or color of your liking for each master. In PowerPoint 2008 most themes come with a whole series of optional background treatments that show up in the Formatting Palette. Choose a grey theme and change the whole thing to blue. On top of that, there are some preset color/font schemes that you can apply to themes. These don’t always change the background of a theme, depending on if the slidee uses images or just color info as the background. In one sense, PowerPoint now takes a cue from Apple in that you can choose a theme, and then choose a “layout” from that theme. Layouts work like the Master slides in Keynote, but with the combination of the aforementioned background treatments, any given theme can now come in a series of colors but still show up only once in the theme selector ribbon.

So what’s the drawback? Complexity. Because there are so many variations and options, I felt lost sometimes. If it were just themes and background options, it would be one thing, but having also the option to choose the preset color and font sets, one can really get lost in all the options. As a theme maker the sea of options makes my head hurt, and I know that with some of my own larger themes, people have actually said I give too many options. I quickly found that if I picked a theme and then changed the color scheme, it changed the background options and I couldn’t get back to the original color scheme because I didn’t know what it had been before. I had to reapply the theme to my slides and start over. On top of that, if you want to apply one theme to one slide and another theme to another slide, you MUST select at least two slides and then apply the theme in order to just affect those slides. If you have only one slide selected it will be applied to all of your slides. This is an important tip that PowerPoint 2008 users will want to remember.

Another issue I found was with the transitions. It almost feels like the programmers forgot to deal with them this time around. They nailed the shadows and other goodies, but the transitions are still pretty lousy, and on my MacBook Pro, selecting one makes my screen flash black but does nothing in the way of a preview on screen most of the time. And there are a total of TWO 3D transitions, cube and flip (along with their various direction choices). Also notable is that transitions are applied upward through your slide list not downward, meaning if you select slide two and apply a transition, it’s applied between slides one and two and not between slides two and three as Keynote does. Animation effects fare no better and most are cheesy at best (most of the effects under the “Exciting” heading are far from it). It appears also that there’s no path animation, something PowerPoint for Windows has had since I believe 2003, and Keynote gained in version 4.

As I’m writing this I realized I have so far only touched on one small section of the new ribbon tool bar. In addition to Themes, Slide Layouts and Transitions, the ribbon also contains Table Styles, Charts, SmartArt Graphics and WordArt. Whereas Keynote themes give you ONE table style per master, PowerPoint gives you any number of table styles which appear when you click the Table Styles tab in the ribbon. I have to do a bit of experimenting here, but the basics are, each theme comes with a set of table styles, and PowerPoint itself has a long list of table styles. You can click on a table style that’s part of the theme and you’ll be asked how many rows and columns you want. Once you’ve okayed that PowerPoint will place a table on your slide. If you use the table tool from the top tool bar instead, PowerPoint will place a table on your slide that may not match it. I found if I did this, I had to then choose the table tab on the ribbon and then the Best Match for Document subtab and choose a style that matched. A bit confusing, but again, more flexible than Keynote (for better or worse).

The next tab is Charts. This one showed promise until I actually used it. For power users, you’re likely going to LOVE that when you click a chart icon, Excel launches and your chart is linked to an excel spreadsheet. Personally, I hardly ever use spreadsheets and the last thing I want is a complicated spreadsheet app to launch just so I can show some bars on my slide. At the least the user should be given the option of using a small grid inside PowerPoint (the way Keynote does) or to use the full blown Excel. Thankfully, even though you’re forced to use Excel, some sample data is placed there so you have a starting point for your chart. Another problem was that there’s no real notice of what you are supposed to do once you’re in Excel. I took a chance that it was all fully automatic and simply closed the Excel document, which turned out to be exactly what you do when you’re done. Once you’re back in PowerPoint, you’ll find a very simple text button on the Formatting Palette that says “Edit in Excel…” that will reopen the chart in Excel if you need to edit it. Again, power users will eat this up, basic users will run screaming in terror. On the plus side, PowerPoints sheer number of chart types makes Keynote look like a charting toy. Exploded Doughnut? Stacked Pyramid? Radar? If you find yourself complaining that Keynote can’t do the kind of charts you want, you’ll likely find one here that works for you.

The styles for charts a are a bit different in that they only show up in the Formatting Palette and not in the ribbon, probably because with Tables there’s really only one kind of table, but with charts you’ve many different types that need to appear in the ribbon.

The next tab is something that Keynote has no real comparison to. SmartArt Graphics are like pre-made illustration or object sets for conveying an idea. Think of them as a group of objects that all match and go together in a group. Because they could get complicated, PowerPoint actually gives each graphic its own little outline palette that can be hidden by a little icon on the top right edge of the group. Since I haven’t had too much time to play with this, I am assuming that each theme has a specific color and font style set for these, and again, you can mess with that only in the Formatting Palette and not the ribbon. You can also completely mess with the grouping (removing objects, moving objects around) and if you totally screw it up, there’s a reset option for the whole group or “graphic.” Overall, it’s once again one of those features that is both powerful and complex. It adds some serious time saving stuff that Keynote doesn’t have, but could cause basic users some confusion if they don’t understand how it works. Overall though, I think this type of thing is really needed in Keynote.

The last tab is one I’ve often used along side the word abomination, and that’s WordArt. I’ve actually said more than once that I’m glad WordArt isn’t in Keynote, but I know that there can be a time and a place for fancy text. Thankfully, most of the presets aren’t that bad, and again, there are some Theme matching color sets on the Formatting palette.. I suspect that theme makers can probably include their own WordArt styles, but I don’t know for sure yet.

One other big difference I wanted to make sure to mention that I found between Keynote and PowerPoint is in how they deal with images and “masks.” In Keynote you can drag an image onto a shape, or select both an image and a shape and mask them (the effect is pretty much the same either way). You then have the ability to resize the mask or the shape independently to get the effect you want. In PowerPoint, you can still drag an image onto a shape (if the shape is selected) but it’s not treated like a mask. You must use the crop tool along with resizing the object to get the effect you want, something that seems more complicated to me than Keynotes masking feature. By the way, I should also mention that PowerPoint continues to come with some decent clip art (and photo objects) and that Keynote ships with only the demo presentation (which does contain some usable clip art). One really interesting tip I discovered is that with both apps open I found I could drag clip art from the Palette in PowerPoint onto a slide in Keynote and it worked fine there.

So, there you have it. My little story turned into a sort of rambling mini review slash Keynote user’s take on PowerPoint 2008. Overall, I think Microsoft really stepped up to the plate and released an incredible upgrade. Some of the reviews I’ve seen for Office seem to infer that the new Office isn’t really that big of an upgrade. I’d have to disagree. The entire interface has been overhauled, and in the case of PowerPoint, it’s got LOTS of new features, and many of the old features have been enhanced. The fact that Word took a cue from Pages and added the layout view (and a bunch of very Pages like templates) is a pretty bold move too, but I won’t go into that for this story. For years Microsoft simply piled on the extra (sometimes unwanted) features and continued to clutter up the interface to the point of it almost being debilitating. What better way to save the brand then to completely gut the interface and start over. Office 2008 really does feel like a Mac app and not something ported over (though 2004 did feel a bit more Mac like than previous versions).

Will I switch over to PowerPoint? Well, I’m actually not a professional presenter, so in that sense, no I won’t switch (and even when I do present in the future I’ll still use Keynote). Will I stop making Keynote themes? Nope, I love Keynote and I’ll continue to run this site and be a huge Keynote fan. Will I stop making fun of PowerPoint? Yeah, I think so. While there are still some annoyances in this new version, it really did catch up on a LOT of visual things that Keynote can do, and it surpassed Keynote in a few places. My biggest complaints at this point are the lack of decent transitions and effects, and the boring/cheesy animation effects. Oh, and I may try my hand at creating PowerPoint themes down the road, but don’t worry, my Keynote themes aren’t going anywhere.

I’ll try to post more reviews/thoughts in the future, but I wanted to get my early thoughts out there for you all.

Click here for Kirk’s blog entry on using Keynote.

In the Document pane of the Inspector, your available tabs have changed from Document and Info, to Document and Spotlight. The Spotlight pane has changed in name only to denote that this is where to place specific information you want searchable by Spotlight. OSX still searches the entire document, though, not to worry, this is just a handy place to insert searchable text that won’t display in the document (AND an area for Keynote to put info gleaned from PowerPoint documents). On the Document side, only the Slideshow Settings saw a change. Two new Kiosk-friendly settings are Restart show if idle for with a time setting and Require password to exit show. Using these, once you’ve got your presentation going, if someone leaves your kiosk on an internal page and walks off, you can set up a time delay for the presentation to restart itself ( from .01 minutes or 6 seconds up to 999.9 minutes or 16 hours 39 minutes and 54 seconds). You can also foil the fella who wants to turn off your kiosk by requiring an administrator password to be entered before the show can be exited by using the Esc key.

Now for the Slide pane. Here, we have the two tabs Transition and Appearance. New 3D transitions are Blinds (4 directions), Doorway, Fall, Reflection (left and right), Revolving Door (left and right), Swoosh and a subtle change to the Mosaic Flip (now, you choose Mosiac Flip and get additional choices for Small, Medium and Large size).

For 2D effects, they’ve added Shutter and Fade Through Color replaces Fade Through Black. There are no new Core effects as Flash is still the only effect that can’t play on certain computers but you may notice that Burn is missing. It’s not because now your computer can play it, it’s because, well, Burn by default is omitted along with several other so-called obsolete 2D effects such as Drop, Falling Tiles, Grid, Motion Dissolve and Twirl. If you want these back, you’ll have to go into Keynote -> Preferences… and under the General tab select Include obsolete animations in choices. Why are they obsolete? Not sure, but, there ya go. Nothing’s new under the Appearance tab so we’ll cube transition over to Build.

You still have the same Build In and Build Out buttons and, at the bottom of the Builds pane, you’ll see that the Set Automatic Builds… button is now a friendly (and less technical sounding) More Options. Once the drawer is opened everything LOOKS the same until you begin setting builds. As you set them, every new build is created as On Click which is indicated with a black dot. If you change the build to Automatically after transition, or Automatically after build # it loses the dot. If you change it again to Automatically with build # then it gets a small icon letting you know it’s building with the previous build. So now, you can visually check your build settings without checking each one individually. And, of course, the same obsolete limitation mentioned previously applies to these animations too.

The Text tab of the Text inspector has the same info, but where we once had Bullets & Numbering we now have Columns and Bullets. The Columns tab allows you to set the number of columns, the width of the columns and the gutter between them and this is true for body text, titles, placed text and even shapes! If you can place text, you can give the text columns. The same is true for Bullets. Any text object including text inside shapes can have bullets now. With Bullets we get familiar options with new additions. Now, there are gadgets that allow you to set the bullet and text indents separately and, under the type of bullets, you now get to choose Tiered Numbers. This allows you to change this

to this

You can also click on each individual line and set that lines number by using the Start at gadget. So, if you’ve got 14 bullets on slide one and another 12 on slide two, you can start slide two at bullet 15 and continue from there. But that’s not ALL Keynote offers for the presenter for which bullets are the message. The list of numbering choices has grown from this

to this!

But wait, there’s more! If you can’t seem to remember that “Tab” increases the indent and “Shift-Tab” decreases it, there’s even an Indent Level gadget that allows you to set the indent with arrows or by typing in the number. There are still some bugs in the interface (selecting a bulleted box allows you to click Continue from previous in order to reset all the sub numbering, but then clicking the radio button for Start at appears to do nothing although using the increase/decrease buttons will show the change on the slide), changing the size and font of numbered text changes the text but not the numbers and some of these options don’t work as you’d expect when applied to the Title, (anyone using bulleted titles??) but hopefully these are things that can be fixed with an upgrade.

Finally, we come to the Graphic inspector. The cool new-kid-on-the-block in this pane is the Reflections setting. At first, it may seem antisocial because it isn’t active and waiting for you to click on it. This is because you just can’t apply a reflection willy-nilly to everything on a slide, you can only set the reflection of an image, masked or umasked. Adjusting the slider determines the opacity gradient of the reflection. If you’ve given your image a shadow the image isn’t reflected but it’s still a nice “free” effect. If you want to go further into mirroring movies text and more, then you’ll want to pick up KeynoteThemePark’s Reflections theme.

All of that and we’re only halfway through! There’s 5 more inspectors to be inspected and more tidbits to be delighted by when we once again pay a visit to the Keynote Inspector.

For starters lets look at the biggies. Ever been frustrated that you can’t make two bullet boxes on a slide? Complain no more. Not only can you use auto bullets in ANY text field (including table cells and objects), but you can make more than one column. This results in a VERY flexible text tool, and will make lots of Keynote users very happy. The second biggie is Group scaling. Now when you create a set of objects and group them together, you can scale the entire group as one. Before Keynote 3 you would have had to stuff the group into a table cell and scale that, or copy and paste it into Preview and paste it back into Keynote. Either way, you couldn’t ungroup the newly sized group once it had been scaled.

Now that the biggies have been fixed, what’s left? Plenty. Keynote 3 finally has a slide sorter view, called Light Table. The only problem we can see with that is that you can’t scale the thumbnails larger or smaller, but this is at least a great start. There are also more shapes in K3, including a Bezier tool (complette with a key combo to add points to an object you’ve already made). You can even switch a normal shape into edit mode and mess with it using the bezier functionality.

Exporting has been greatly enhanced. There’s finally an HTML export, and though it only creates full screen slides and navigation buttons, it saves a lot of work if all you need is a quick HTML version of your presentation. Flash export can now include sound (though we’re going to have to test it more to see if it’s better than K2). QuickTime export now allows you to choose Hyperlinks Only upon export. Ken tested this and sure enough, it fixes a bug that K2 had where the user could click on something other than a button in an interactive QT movie made with Keynote and it would advance to the next slide, which it was not supposed to do. The image export now lets you send your images directly into iPhoto, which used to require a 3rd party plug-in (or a manual import to iPhoto) previously. This features requires iPhoto 5 or later. PDF export finally has some options, including adding notes, slide numbers, borders, and build stages.

We’ll deal with a completely new export option (DVD export) in another review.

We’re not nearly done with the updates! There was a thread in the Apple Keynote forums a month or so back that dealt with adding other builds between bullet builds. Apple listened and added the ability to break apart a set of grouped builds. While you can’t then change the order of those builds, you CAN add other builds between them. An example would be building in bullets 1 and 2, then building in an image, and finally building in bullets 3 and 4.

Another odd but useful feature that we’ve seen pop up on the Apple forums was a time out feature when using Keynote in a kiosk type setting. In Keynote 3 you can now have the presentation start over after a given amount of idle time. Now your interactive kiosks can start over at the main menu after no one’s touched a key for 5 minutes. On top of that, you can require a password to exit the show, keeping people from breaking your kiosk.

Another new and much missed feature is the Image Adjustment window. It’s basically been grafted out of iPhoto, and uses the new dashboard system, making the window semi-transparent. It won’t work on objects, but it does work quite well on images, and even includes a reset button if you mess up your image.

While Apple showed off the 3d charts, they weren’t as high on the feature request list as most of the other items we’re going through in this review, so we’ll cover those in another review. What Apple didn’t mention is they added one new chart type, Scatter, which many have been asking for since Keynote 1. Error bars still aren’t there, but at least Apple’s working on the chart engine now. Also new are calculations within tables, though the selection is pretty slim, but again, it’s a good start.

We’ll finish up with the visual updates. In addition to adding new effects (and turning some off, which you can turn on again in the prefs), Apple gives you the ability to force Keynote to let go of the screen during a show. This allows you to trigger Expose, Dashboard, or even Front Row. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities (including break timers that are actually running in Dashboard). Ken tested Boinx Mouseposé and found that with this option turned on, it works properly in Keynote. It’s highliy likely that the apps that let you draw on the screen (which haven’t work with Keynote in the past) will now work fine.

We’ll wrap up this review with one last added feature. QuickTime movie controls. This was pretty high on the feature list (judging by the amount of requests on the Apple forums). Now while a movie is playing, if you move the mouse, a controller will appear below the movie. If you don’t want to display the controller, there are also key commands for rewind, fastfoward, pause and others. Sadly, even though you can click on a movie and the slide will not advance, QT VR movies still do nothing in Keynote 3. We’re hoping this is on their list for an update, and not something we have to wait for in Keynote 4.

Overall, we’re having a blast discovering new features and fixes in Keynote 3. This really is a full upgrade release and not a small update. Keynote’s interface is so elegant, that Apple managed to add plenty of features without changing the interface much, so at first glance you might only notice a few things, never realizing how much has changed until you start checking to see if some of those old annoyances sill exist. We’re sure we’ve even missed some features in this review as we’re still discovering more stuff.

Next up…brand new features.

First thing you’ll notice is that iWork ’06 does NOT overwrite iWork ’05. It creates a new folder labeled iWork ’06 and leaves the other alone. Because of this, if you’ve placed any iWork apps in your dock, you’ll need to place the new versions there manually. After that, you may feel a strong urge to delete the iWork folder. However, I would urge you to keep it around for a month or so. If you need to, set an iCal alarm to remind you to remove it later if you need the space. But, until the user community has had the opportunity to go over it and has given it the “Upgrade Bill of Health” you should probably keep the old version around as a backup (if presenting is your business I KNOW I don’t have to tell YOU this, right?) Also, as with all Apple applications PLEASE leave these applications in the folder into which they are installed.

Upon opening the app, you’re presented with a theme selection screen. There you’ll find a number of new themes that include:

Modern Portfolio and Formal which adopts the clean polished look of Keynote Pro’s themes,
Leather Book and Classic Silk, both good looking textures of their namesakes with the standard theme layout,
and White Corners and Vintage which harken back to the photo book look of MyKeynoteThemes.

Another new theme is Black, which is basically the White theme in reverse. Many of us accustomed to working with Keynote have been manually making changes to our presentations to set the background color of the White theme to black then adjusting the text color, but it’s nice to see it as an addition. Keynote also adds to the 800×600 and 1024×768 slide sizes by adding 1280×720, 1680×1050, 1920×1080 to some select themes (White, Black, Gradient, Modern Portfolio, and White Corners). Another thing you’ll notice is that only Apple’s theme preview images have white borders now. It’s a small point but now themes from some of the theme makers have black lines on the left and right making them just look… different. While on the subject of themes, these new themes are NOT available to Keynote 2. What this means from a theme creation/management perspective remains to be seen.

Taking a trip through the menus shows what you’ve come to know from Keynote for Keynote, File, and Edit. Hopefully, “Edit LinkBack Item” will find it’s way happily back into my Edit menu once the plugin is updated for Keynote 3 and for those wondering about “Special Characters…” under the Edit menu, yes Bank Gothic is still a broken font. The Insert menu is the first to see significant change. It’s been reworked to be more streamlined so that all of the Shapes are now under a submenu. The built in shapes have also increased in number to include a Star, Polygon and “Draw a Shape” which is easy speak for Bezier curves. Both the Star and Polygons are variable in that you are presented with a popup interface to control the number of points and sides respectively. Draw a Shape allows you to create your own shapes within Keynote limited only by your artistic ability. There’s also a nifty new feature that lets you insert comments complete with their own little sticky note (looks like the one in Dashboard). Just remember that if you want to click and move them, only the area along the top and bottom is grabbable, not the sides.

The Slide menu sees no changes while the Format menu has some interesting items that hint at new features. First up is Format -> Table -> Fill Cells which allows you to select a table cell and fill every cell you select to the right and down with the selected cell’s data. Next is Chart which, under Chart Type includes not only a scatter plot, but a collection of new 3D charts too, from 3D columns, to 3D lines to 3D pies, 3D versions of charts you know and love. With the new Shape menu under Format comes options to Sharpen or Smooth them but only after either creating your own shape within Keynote or selecting a shape and choosing Make Editable. Another new command under Shape is Reset Text and Object Handles. One of the most impressive new features of Keynote is the ability to mask an image with a shape using the Mask with Shape command that we’ll go over in depth later.

Moving along, we find the simple elegance of the Arrange menu has been left untouched between versions while View offers some pleasant surprises. Now, we have the ability to Rehearse Slideshows without the need for a second monitor. Also new is a Light Table view that allows another way to rearrange your slides, Show Notes is renamed Show Presenter Notes, there’s an option to Hide Comments (remember the sticky notes?), and another to Show Adjust Image which brings another popup interface onto the screen to allow basic adjustments to your imported images.

Skipping past the Window menu, you’ll find the Help menu and again Apple has supplied us with an iWork Tour specifically highlighting the special features of iWork ’06.

And there you have it, a faster than fast introduction to the new Keynote. Even though the above changes are cool, that’s nothing compared to what we’ll be examining in the coming weeks when we begin to dig even deeper into what iWork’s better half has to offer. Next up, we’re going to inspect the inspectors!

The unit is long, similar in length to the Keyspan model, but it is covered in a smooth but grippable black plastic. The one thing that sets this clicker apart is the lcd screen on the front. This is the first clicker I’ve ever seen that has a built-in timer, which you can set in 5 minute increments. No more messing with clocks or trying to see your mac screen during your talk!

In the package you’ll fine a neoprene pouch that fits the unit snugly, and inside that you’ll find the two AAA batteries that run the unit. Other than the multi-lingual instruction booklet, that’s all that’s included. The USB adapter for the unit slides right into the top, near the laser pointer window, and has a tiny lip on it, making it easy to pull out. This is really nice compared with some units I’ve played with that either had a huge adapter, or had to have a large case to hold both the clicker and the adapter.

On the face of the unit are 5 buttons: F5/esc, Black, Back, Forward and laser pointer. The ONLY button that didn’t work fully was the F5/esc. It’s supposed to start a show, but in keynote it only causes the computer to beep (several readers have mentioned that you can customize the keyboard shortcuts in OS X and enable f5 to kick in your shows). Once the show is running however, this button will escape out of the show, so it does partially work. be CAREFUL when using this with PowerPoint as I noticed the F5 button actually can delete text or entire slides when you’re in edit mode. All the other buttons work fine, including the two volume up/down buttons that are on the side of the unit. It would be nice to have a Mute button, but it’s very usable as is.

On the right side of the unit, mostly out of fingers reach when you’re holding it during a presentation, is the timer button. Clicking it once puts you into timer edit mode, clicking it again adds 5 minutes of time. Continue clicking and you get 5 minutes added each time, up to 9 hours and 50 minutes (I’m hoping none of you actually speak that long!). Press and hold the button and the timer goes back to zero.

The LCD screen displays the timer, a battery meter, and a 4 part bar that I assume drops a bar during each quarter of your talk. I tested it with 5 min and it worked its way down through the bars about each minute. Once really cool feature that might also be a reason NOT to use this unit is the vibrate alert. At 5 min and 2 min the unit actually vibrates in your hand. It’s a very short burst, and even sitting on a desk I barely heard it, so it’s not like a cell phone going off, so for most people it won’t be such a shock as to make you jump in front of your audience. It also vibrates when the timer runs out, and the screen flashes for a second or so.

On the left side of the unit, near the top (above the volume buttons) is an on/off switch. No more wearing down your remotes in your bag! When you turn on the unit, it vibrates and the screen comes on. The last button is on the back. Logitech included a flush reset button, just in case the unit messes up or doesn’t respond. Hopefully you won’t need to mess with that.

To get the unit working with your Mac simply pull the usb adapter out of the top of it and plug it into a usb port. On my PowerBook the New Keyboard setup screen appeared, but since there are no drivers, I just closed the window without going through the setup. Once you’ve plugged in the adapter, open up Keynote or PPT, start your show and click away. If you need yo drop the volume on say, an embedded movie, just click the volume buttons. Once suggestion if you plan to do this is to turn OFF the audible notice your machine gives you when you adjust the volume. You can do this in the Sound prefs. Just uncheck the box labeled “Play feedback when volume is changed.”

Overall, for a unit marked for use with a PC, this little clicker works exceptionally well. I was able to walk into another room in my house and click it, when I came back to my office, the next slide was up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the volume buttons actually worked, and the little things like vibrate alert and a timer just add icing to the cake. Considering this thing sells for $69.95, it’s a steal, especially if you don’t need to custom configure extra buttons, but want something a step above the regular forward/backward units that are out there.

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Logitec 2.4 GHz Cordless Presenter