SlideMagic Blog

I have now stopped dragging along a laptop to client meetings. The thing is (relatively) heavy, requires a bag, and being the guy with the lap top in a meeting always put you in an inferior social position somehow. The PowerPoint for iPad app has improved a lot. You no longer have to go through the tedious process of downloading a file from Dropbox, remembering your 365 password, uploading the file to the 365 cloud drive, and downloading the file again. Still potential font rendering issues (even with standard fonts that might drop to the next line), still makes me use the combination of PDF files and iBooks. It renders nicely and the iBooks folder/collection solution is good enough to keep things organised. A lighting-to-ancient-VGA-projector convertor enables you to present on a big screen.

Yesterday, Microsoft finally released a full version of Office for iPad, including PowerPoint. Unlike a previous release for iPhone, this version allows you to create and edit documents.

I blogged before about the strategic mistake of Microsoft restricting its Office products for its own operating systems, and I think the recent change in CEO might have something to do with the sudden release of the iPad app which was rumoured to have been ready for a long time.

So what do I think? First of all, the design looks great. It is a good blend of the iOS environment with Microsoft-specific UI elements (ribbon). The app works fast/snappy and is intuitive to use.

The best thing is that finally PowerPoint will look normal when opening them on an iPad. Fonts work, no need for PDF-ing, or using specific apps such as SlideShark. This takes an important uncertainty out of business meetings. I had many instances where I needed to pull out a deck quickly and unexpectedly, and if an iPad is the only devices you have on you, you keep on apologising for the horrible look of your slides.

And I think this will be the main use of PowerPoint for iPad: showing presentations plus the occasional last minute text edit, or slide show re-order. Serious slide design work is not possible, first of all due to the small screen that is not comfortable to work on for a long time, and secondly because critical functions are missing when compared to the desktop app.

I am starting to work with the CEO of a very large company to design a presentation for 1-on-1 meetings with institutional investors. I am thinking of a presentation designed for iPad, or even a loose stack of slide print outs that can be randomly selected as the need comes up in the meeting.

The big story of the company can probably be explained verbally in a conversation, these slides that are typically included in a presentation for a big audience can be left out. But then, equity analysts are likely to have detailed questions that require factual backup slides that are denser in design than the ones you would typically use for a large audience investor update.

An interesting project.

I have been experimenting a lot with using my iPad as a laptop replacement. It boils down to getting used to a new user interface: designing slides in Keynote works fine, and even building a spreadsheet in Numbers might be more intuitive on a touch interface, it is easier to navigate around cells. Strangely enough picking up a regular pen and paper feels a bit weird the first second after all that digital handwriting.

There is a very big issue though, an issue that was solved on the PC in the mid 1990s: multiple application windows. Quickly getting the data out of a PDF, running a side calculation in a spreadsheet, browsing through your images before putting them in a deck is simply not possible yet.

Here are some features that should be baked into a future tablet operating system:

• Touch-friendly application switching that does not create the cluttered window mess of regular computers
• A universal file format so you do not have to worry about in which application to open what
• A new clever archiving system that is not (only) dependent on file names and directories, maybe find files based on the time you were working on them, based on the people you cooperated with.

Maybe the successor to Microsoft Office is not a new series of software, but a standard file format that covers text, graphics, and calculations on top of which everyone can build applications.

After a year of experimenting with custom fonts, I noticed that I am going back to Arial more and more in my presentation design, so my decks can be read on Windows, Mac, iPad, PDF, Dropbox, SlideShark, Keynote, PowerPoint on any device in any place. Well at least it forces me to make more effort to let my slides look good if I cannot rely on a pretty font…

I am switching my own introduction presentation to iPad/iPhone, leaving my laptop home as a I go to meetings and instead bringing a small iOS to VGA converter cable with me (Airplaying the presentation to a big screen only works in my own office for the moment). I would recommend this to anyone who constantly needs to have her pitch/sales presentation ready to go.

As a result, I am trying all possible ways to view slides on my iPad. Only Keynote users have a perfect solution (Keynote), if you use other formats it is still compromising. In my case for example, I need PowerPoint to show example presentations that I designed a while ago. And a second complication is that I use a few custom fonts…

So here are your options, I use Dropbox to sync my files, it is still a lot more convenient than iCloud.

1. Keynote to Keynote.  Straightforward and simple. Download in Dropbox, tick open in Keynote and you are all set. When you are in presenter mode, you get a preview of the next slide on your iPad, while the audience just sees the current slide on the projector. Only works with standard fonts that are installed on the iPad.
2. PowerPoint to Keynote. This works surprisingly well (if you use standard fonts). Download the PowerPoint file in Dropbox, tap open in Keynote and you have a file which is 95% OK. However, I am a perfectionist, and the 5% needs to be right as well.
3. SlideShark is iPad app specifically designed for presenting slides. You can upload PowerPoint files to their server, or tap a dropbox or email link and tell the iPad to open the file in SlideShark. The interface is nice, with the option to move randomly between slide tiles (which the audience cannot see) to break the lineair flow of a deck. SlideShark preserves animations in your slide. Using a special font requires a request to SlideShark technical support to install it in the data center. Unlike Keynote, SlideShark does not support the standard Apple fonts (such as Helvetica) SlideShark is not yet retina-optimized I think, the image looks slightly hazy on my screen, but I am sure an update will follow soon. The app has still some childhood diseases at the moment but it could be a clear winner in the future as the team there seems to working hard to make it work among larger competitors who are less focussed iPad presenting (i.e., Microsoft).
4. PDF to Adobe Reader for iPad. Convert your PowerPoint file to PDF on your desktop, download it via Dropbox and select to open it in Adobe’s Reader app(free). Fonts come out perfectly. The display is crystal clear, and the Adobe Reader app for iPad has a good full screen mode (unlike other document readers). Obviously PDF does not support animations
5. PowerPoint to Adobe CreatePDF for iPad. The Adobe CreatePDF app works reasonably well for me (I do not understand all the 1-star ratings on iTunes), but (and it is a big but), only if you use standard fonts (and are willing to invest $10) and your deck does not have animations.

I am continuing my research in mobile presentation platforms, with very useful input from you guys.

Until now, the Keynote versus PowerPoint battle has been a feature debate. While Keynote has some better features in some instances, they are unlikely to be enough to switch people over who just invested years in getting to grips with one user interface.

Mobile devices might change that.

There are two types of presentation decks. The everyday presentation is a PowerPoint file that is used in corporates to make business decisions; it is not really meant for presentation, rather it is a more visual substitute for a word processor. The second one is the key company pitch, sales, or fund raising presentation. You use it all the time. You perfect it all the time with small changes. You use it in different settings, mostly for audiences outside the company.

I would argue that by now, it is better to have that crucial presentation in Keynote than in PowerPoint. Why? Mobile devices, and the integration of PowerPoint with iPads is non-existent, while by now Keynote has pretty decent mobile apps.

Pulling out a laptop in a coffee shop to go through a deck is unnatural. Flipping on your iPad is not. An iPad could also be a powerful replacement of the PC + clicker combination that we use for conference room, or even on-stage presentations.

One scenario. You sitting at the reception of a venture capitalist waiting to be picked up. On your iPhone you click through your slides to do a final mental rehearsal. Ah, a typo, a quick fix. You walk into the conference room and one of the VC partners is late. Instead of an on-screen presentation you tell your story verbally, while pointing at a key chart on your iPad when necessary. The second VC partner walks into the room, and immediately you Airplay the presentation onto the conference room screen. You quickly repeat the main points you made by picking off a few slides from your iPad (because of presenter mode, the audience does not see you browsing through tiles) and finish the discussion with the detailed financials, and the use of the funds that you are trying to raise.