Keynote Review

All play and no work makes Jack glad he bought an iPad. But Jack’s carefree days may be numbered if his boss ever sets eyes on apps like Keynote. This efficient productivity app lets executive road warriors put together presentations as annoying and distracting as anything PowerPoint can churn out, complete with transitions, fades, animations and embedded media.

It’s fairly easy to master, with a handful of tools to enter and edit data, add colours, borders, shading and effects. Apple has kept much of the complexity hidden away in an ‘i’ button that brings up submenus galore, hiding a comprehensive set of graphic and text options (thankfully, not including flashing on and off). Files are held locally on the iPad but can be shared over email, iWork and other cloud services.

Email is also the best way to open new presentations and a few minor font issues aside, Keynote is compatible with PowerPoint. You can also print presentations if you have AirPrint set up.

Like Apple’s other office apps, Pages and Numbers, Keynote benefits from the additional of a Bluetooth keyboard for data entry and the optional iPad HDMI output for mirroring. Sadly, there’s still no AirPlay support but the app can be remote controlled by another iOS device using the Keynote Remote app (59p).