Okay, so it's no version 2. There are no automated timings, no timeline, no better charting or equation tools, no well....a lot of things everyone wants in Keynote. That's why Apple numbered this release 1.1. Too much stuff added for a 1.0.2 release, not enough stuff for a 1.5 or 2.0 release. Just be grateful for what they DID take care of and have patience for what the future will hold for Keynote.
Keynote 1.1 takes care of a LOT of problems. Here's a few we know about:
PowerPoint Import
PowerPoint importing has been VERY much improved. Most of the presentations you may have had problems with will probably work now. We did find one presentation file it wasn't able to open, and it turned out to be an image file on one of the PPT slides. Also, there seems to be less work in rearranging the newly imported show in Keynote, font sizes are closer, non-bulleted lists don't suddenly get bullets added to them. There's STILL a problem with having a second bullet list in your PPT file (they come in with • type bullets in a free text box), but that probably isn't as easy to fix, so Apple left it in for now. Overall: Big Improvement
QuickTime Performance
Wow, where to start? The 1.1 release has improved QuickTime playback performance, and the release of QuickTime 6.3 only increases this. How's this for a test:
Test machine: On our Dual 867 with a 32 Meg NVidia GForce4 card. 768 meg of ram
Control Monitor: Sony G420 19" crt running at 1280x1024 off the DVI port with Apple adapter
Show Monitor: ViewSonic 17GS 17" crt running at 1024X768 off the ADC port with Dr. Bott adapter
Test Run: We placed a 720x540 Digital Juice DV file, stretched to 1024X768 on the background of the slide and set the transparency of the clip to 50%. Then on TOP of that we placed a DV clip we had that was captured in Final Cut Pro. We resized this clip to 640x480 and centered it over the slide. We then turned on the drop shadow for the second clip and set the transparency of the clip to 63%. After setting the loop function for the background clip, we crossed our fingers and hit play. Wow. Even though several other mac apps were running in the background, AND both monitors were sharing the 32 meg video card, AND the show was running only on screen 2, it played...perfectly. No dropped frames or jittery audio or video, it just played. On top of that, we decided to build in some text. At this point we noticed that at the second we triggered each bullet to appear, the movies paused for a second and started up again. Oh well, you can't have everything (yet!) Overall: Just plain amazing
New Navigation Features
Apple added some nice new navigation features with this update. Here's a grid of the new stuff
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Number then Enter
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Jumps to the slide with that number
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+ key
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Move forward one slide with NO transitions or Builds
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- key
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Move backward one slide with NO transitions or Builds
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Number then +
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Jumps forward as many slides as the number you enter
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Number then -
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Jumps backward as many slides as the number you enter
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Finally, those of you who miss the number cuing should be happy, and a few who requested a way to move through the show but skip transitions should also be happy. The number cuing will also be beneficial to Churches who use Keynote in a worship setting, as they can now cue slides the way they have done it in PowerPoint-with the whole library in the same file, and a numerical index of the slides so they can cue them.
Other Tid Bits
The Apple release notes mention a few other bug fixes and additions, but these were the BIG ones. We've found a few bugs that did not get taken care of, but NONE of them are show stoppers so far, and they mostly affect Theme builders, not the average user (see our newly updated bugs page for more info). One bug that HAS been taken care of is the ability to double click a Theme (ends with .kth) file in the desktop and then build a regular show file from that. Before version 1.1 this caused all kinds of problems, now it works fine.
There are also a few new features that might make users happy. When importing large images, there's now a preference you can turn on that will shrink them to fit the slide AND reraster them so they are the resolution of the slide, not their original resolution. There is also a setting that modifies the 3D transitions, pulling them back away from the screen so the edges don't get cropped. It's subtle, but it looks cool. Lastly, PPT exporting has been fixed to make smaller files. No, it still won't hold shadows or tansparency, but the file size is greatly reduced from previous Keynote versions. Apple also added the a ability to show series labels on vertical bar charts and a few other odds and ends.
While it's no 2.0 release, it sure did fix a TON of problems with version 1. If you have been waiting till the QuickTime performance was fixed and for the ability to cue slides via their number, go buy Keynote NOW, and join the growing community of cutting edge presenters. If you were hoping for automated timings and other such goodies...have patience. I know Apple hears us, they know what we'd like to see. Let's give them time to do it better than the other guys.
