Keynote for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By Supermagnetman

  Lots to like about KeyNote but...

  One thing that is extremely annoying is that this app is missing the “Save AS” feature. Apparently the people writing this app are not familiar with this concept. I use keynote every week to do my Sunday School lesson for my class. It has a lot of things that I like but I always open the previous week’s lesson and update everything and then I want to Save As - as I have been able to do in every other app on Macs since the original Word and Excel apps from the 1980s. The writers of this app think that I should think of it differently and first open it, then remember to “duplicate” it and then Rename it. That is a far less intuitive way to work and does not make sense - at all. Maybe someone somewhere in Microsoft will read this and have an “Opps” monent and restore this functionality.

  
  
• By CowInvasion1

  Awesome and free

  Ok, This app may often fall under that shadow of the "almighty" microsoft Powerpoint. But it has almost, maybe even as much, maybe even more features than Powerpoint. But you want a simple, easy to understand reason why Keynote is better? Well, Keynote is free. Now how much is Powerpoint? Not 10, not 20, not 40, but 140 dollars. I am not joking. Sure, you could buy office, which is less. But not free. The cheapest plans are 70 dollars a year or a 150 dollars one time purchase, which is even more than powerpoint. But let's move on from the price. Sure, there are reported issues. But they're more annoyances than roadblocks, and I've never actually encountered any of them, except for the having to update thing but all that requires you to do is, well, update Keynote. And, there are complaints for Powerpoint too. So, the conclusion is, Don't buy Powerpoint. Use this for free.

  
  
• By Eberg1133

  Update adds and takes away.

  Keynote has been recieveing some big updates recently: the object list, text masking, and collaborative enhancements have made it an incredible design and storytelling tool. Other features are added that take away some of its functionality and have left me (a power user) feeling frustrated. One example: the new 'face detection' feature. This feature is intended to make masking images of humans easier by centering the content on ther face. sounds great on paper, however the feature was implemented with zero options, parameters, or variables. This means that if you are creating a custom shape (to cut out a person or achieve another artistic effect) the subject is repositioned within the mask. This is incredibly frutrating and feels like a major step backwards. Please Microsoft Keynote team - if you read this review (or the other feedback I have submitted) add an option to disable face detection,.

  
  
• By Mickey Schafman

  Quirky and unstable

  I’ve been using Keynote for “slide” presentations for a dozen years or so, and I always do so with great trepidation. I’m sitting here now having been working all afternoon on a presentation that must be done in three days. I constantly save my project offsite because you never know when Keynote is going to simply quit or drop photos or do something that’s unexplainable. Today, it began telling me that Autosave no longer was working, so I frequently did a manual save. Suddenly, Keynote dumped on me, trashing most (but not all) of my work. I opened my offsite saved copy, which was largely intact, but there were still a couple of missing photos. A prompt came up that said something to the effect “Your images may not look the same.” Huh? I’ve been trying to download the newest version now for about a half hour, but it won’t complete the download. I guess I’m going to have to switch to PowerPoint. Sad.

  
  

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