this is the take of Edward Tufte
With characteristic Apple elegance, Keynote produces more gracefully designed slides than clunky PP. Keynote is useful as PP slide reader. Both Keynote and PP serve as competent Projector Operating Systems: projecting full screen color images and videos.
About 80% of the deep problems with PP, however, are also problems with Keynote since there is inherent defect in slideware: low resolution, replacing sentences with grunts, relentless sequentiality, and so on through the rest of the problems. About 80% of my essay could just as well be called The Cognitive Style of Slideware: Pitching Out Corrupts Within.
Consequently, slideware redesigns are largely futile exercises; solutions for serious technical reporting are found in good technical reports, not in the interior redecorating of slides. My essay is largely about what happens to the quality of evidence and analysis when passing through slideware. Patches for PP and slide redesigns by commercial artists cannot solve those problems for technical reports.
All history of improvements in human communication is written in terms of improvements in resolution: to produce, for viewers of evidence, more bits per unit time, and more bits per unit area. Slideware is contrary to that history. Trading in reductions in resolution for user convenience or for pitching may useful in mass market products or in commercial art, but not for technical communications. The solution is not to rescue slideware design; the solution is to use a different, better, and content-driven presentation method. On this solution, see our thread PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports
entire discussion is available athttp://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000zF
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