Keynote is a presentation software application made by Apple Computer for their Mac OS X operating system. Keynote version 2 was announced on 11 January 2005 as part of the iWork software package (which also includes the Pages word processing and page layout program). The combined package has a retail price of $79 USD.

History

Keynote began as a software program for Apple's current CEO Steve Jobs' use in creating the presentations used during Macworld Conference and Expo and other Apple keynote events. The program was eventually sold publicly as Keynote 1.0 for $99 (US), and in some respects was a vast improvement over existing presentation software, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Unlike PowerPoint, Keynote has full support for almost all image types, and the interface and design are much more graphic-oriented, typically creating very sharp and beautiful slides. Since Keynote makes use of Mac OS X's built-in graphics technologies such as Quartz, it can produce very visually appealing slides very easily. In addition, Keynote includes truly 3D transitions, such as a rotating cube or a simple flip of the slide.

It is reputed that early versions of Keynote are very close to the Lighthouse Design Concurrence presentation software, which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was said to have appreciated greatly in his move from glass slides to the electronic version using NeXTSTEP [1] (NeXTWORLD).

Roger Rosner [2], director of Apple Computer and previous founder and director of Lighthouse Design, has contributed greatly to Concurrence and other Lighthouse applications.

Features

• Themes that allow the user to keep consistency in colors and fonts throughout the presentation, including charts, graphs and tables.
• 3D slide transitions that resemble rolling cubes or flipping pages, or dissolving transitions that fade one slide into the next.
• Dual monitor support: the presenter can show the presentation on a screen and still see the desktop or notes from his or her laptop.
• Exports to PDF, Quicktime, and PowerPoint. Keynote also uses .key files based on XML. [3]

See also

• Microsoft PowerPoint, especially the section Cultural effects

External links

• Keynote web site

Keynote is also the name of a tree-based text editor produced by Tranglos Software. It is based on the Tree text (like Treepad ) concept of allowing "nodes" in a tree panel to represent separate fields from within a single text file.