SlideMagic Blog

In an earlier post, I have already declared Microsoft to be cool again, and the release of Windows 10 this week proves the point.

Microsoft products in the past looked like the inside of boring office cubicles that they were most used in. Fuzzy gradients, drop shadows, it all blended perfectly in the surroundings. That started to change with Windows 8. Windows 8 looked great but was hard to use for people that grew up with Windows since the mid 1990s. With Windows 10 Microsoft has got it right. A nice clean look, flat design, no gradients, monochrome app icons, fantastic. It looks better than OSX. (If you switch off the live tiles)

The whole operating system is built around apps and has the feel of a mobile device. The minimalist mail app can easily be set up with my gmail account (it misses some functionality though). Beautiful Twitter and Facebook apps.

Some 1990s features that I miss in OSX are still there. Windows resizing/maximizing/minimizing is more intuitive. I like the bread crumb threats when browsing through file hierarchies. While other 1990s features have gone. The messy control panel is still there, but there is now a more friendly, simpler way to access basic computer settings.

The Edge browser is great, minimalist and beautiful. Browser innovation always starts with a basic, fast browser that then gets loaded with features over time (Firefox, Chrome). Hopefully Edge stays simple.

I installed Windows 10 on top of a Parallels 10 virtual machine. The install was not yet completely smooth. Microsoft complaints that the Parallels display adaptors is not compatible. After a few hacks I managed to bypass this bottleneck, but after installing Windows 10, I see the issue. The screen resolution in some apps is not there yet. I am sure that Parallels is working hard to fix this issue. It is strange that it still pops up, Windows 10 has been released to developers for some time now.

Now that the installed base of Macs is growing, especially outside the large enterprises, you need to take into account that your PowerPoint presentation is likely to be opened on both machines.

There are obvious differences to be aware of. The key one is fonts: there is a large set of fonts that are available on both operating systems, but very obvious ones are not always part of the overlap (Helvetica for example is not available on a standard Windwos machine, and Calibri gets only installed on a Mac once the user buys Microsoft Office).

But here are the less obvious ones. Even if you stick to standard fonts, there are still tiny differences in how both operating systems insert line breaks. Watch out especially for tight text in boxes.

Also, there is an annoying difference in the way PowerPoint for Mac colors text and shapes. You pick the same colour for both, but they look different. A design can look perfect on a Windows machine, but off on a Mac.

There is no quick solution to all of this. Installing a second virtual machine on your computer might be a bit overkill. I guess there is no alternative but to ask a friend or the recipient of the presentation to send back a quick PDF file to double check, especially for important presentations that will be presented on screen (as opposed to a document meant for reading).

Although I have switched to a Mac, I dip into the world of Windows now and then on a virtual machine, for such things as running .EXE CD ROMs with medical images on them, or editing a chart for a client still on PowerPoint 2003. The latter is no longer necessary, and that is a good thing, since Windows 8 is no longer supporting PowerPoint 2003.

So, I took the plunge and installed Windows 8 on my Parallels 8 virtual machine. I ignored all the scary warnings on the Parallels web site and managed to get a perfect install.

As a non-Hebrew speaker in Israel I always have an additional issue when installing new software. Trying to change the system language on a computer without being able to read most of the text on the screen. Gambling, plus comparing English and Hebrew screen shots finally did the job, but my computer science undergraduate degree came in handy. Not something for novice computer users as languages for application screens, keyboards, user accounts and welcome screens all seemed to be controlled in a slightly different way.

OK, back to the software. I will not describe the ins and outs of the new operating system here, but stick to my personal impressions. Detailed descriptions can be found in other reviews.

I really like the new Microsoft graphical look and feel of the new Metro interface. It is calm and clean, with simple clean graphics without shadings, gradients, drop shadows and near-realistic leather or paper effects. Some of the tiles on your home screen update in real time with weather, stock market information and a flow of pictures of your facebook and Twitter friends. I switched these live updates off, too distracting.

I upgraded my setup to the latest MacBook Pro (the i5 processor started to struggle with some of my music creation plugins) and can gives some updates on my previous posts over the last 2 months or so. Basically all glitches were due to the late 2015 iMac, especially its graphics card. All is fine now:

• No pink letter rendering in Chrome
• No corrupted cursor when waking up from sleep

Now it is just down to small things: a colour picker, screen shots, and that CMD vs CTRL issue.

Cover image via WikiPedia

I have now spent a few days doing real presentation design client work on PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. This post brings together impressions published in earlier blog posts.

The bottom line is that the average user will not notice any differences between the 2 versions of PowerPoint. Some positives:

1. The application has slightly more Mac fee to it
2. I like the organized way fonts weights are grouped together.
3. The integration with Aperture, a photo organizer is very good. If you buy images from iStockPhoto, somehow a lot of keywords are saved with the file. PowerPoint 2011 integrates seamlessly with Aperture, making the full library of images on your hard drive searchable by keyword.

The professional presentation designer however, will notice a few differences. PowerPoint 2010 can do a bit more than PowerPoint 2011:

1. The selection pane, a great tool construct complex layered diagrams is missing. (An earlier post about the selection pane here)
2. Toolbar customization could make PowerPoint 2011 crash. Especially, do not try to drag the straight arrow connector into your top toolbar. If your software has been corrupted, see this Microsoft post about how to fix things. [UPDATE, THE RELEASE OF SP 1 MIGHT HAVE SOLVED THIS ISSUE]
3. Whenever you try to move or resize an object very close to the static guides, PowerPoint will decide to move the static guide, not the object, and staying on the subject of static guides: you cannot space the interval at which you want to set static guides.
4. Color rendering can be a bit off. When give the text and its background shape the same color, you can still read the text on the Mac, but not on the PC. PowerPoint for the Mac handles colors for shapes and text differently.
5. PowerPoint for Mac cannot embed custom fonts (PowerPoint Ninja explains what this is)
6. You cannot insert vector shapes in the Mac version of PowerPoint (see here why this is can be useful), so if you want to adjust the color of a vector diagram, you have to do it in Illustrator and import the illustration as a picture into PowerPoint.

Humans process information absorbed during the day in a good night’s sleep. Important things get put in long-term memory, details that are less important go to the “forget bin”. Stress and noise gets reduced. When we get up, we feel refreshed and ready to get going again.

Memory is a big issue in AI at the moment. A few months ago, it was about remembering your last 3 prompts (sentences). Today, these “context windows” can span novels, to the point where this memory actually starts to confuse the model. A technical solution: dream cycles where the AI model peruses its information, selectively forgets details, and stores important data for future reference.

When it comes to presentation design, it is important to give your thoughts rest as well. Coming back to a story line after a few days makes your realize what actually is the best way to communicate the message.

And a fresh pair of AI eyes can help as well. Clear the context of your model, or open an entirely different one, upload your draft and ask whether this is actually the best way to tell your story…

AI is very poor at navigating context history. “Go back to the previous version”, “change this”, “replace that”, will almost always lead to confused, diluted responses. You need to “freeze” progress in your work. You got to a good version. Asked for an improvement but did not get it: open a new chat windows and start fresh without the last message exchange.

I am sure it is a matter of months before this issue gets resolved in most AI applications.

During the Windows - Apple battle of the early 2000s, one of Apple’s major arguments always was that things “just worked”. No drivers to install, software was simple and easy to understand. Things did not crash.

Being both a developer and an amateur electronic musician, I am always a bit late to update my computer’s operating system. I recently upgraded to Sequioa and have noticed a constant trickle of small, little glitches. Difficulties switching audio outputs, Facetime phones that keep on ringing after answering a call, weirdness when waking up a laptop with external monitors attached, apps not working. The solution is usually a machine re-boot.

I hope it is my particular machine set up.

SlideMagic has added direct support for Apple Silicon, Apple computers with ‘M” processors. This will make the performance of SlideMagic on modern Apple machines much faster. (Previous version used an on-the-spot translation from Intel to ARM, draining performance).

In the download sections of the web site you will now see 3 buttons: Windows (unchanged), Mac (modern ARM machines), and Mac Intel (older Macs that are still on Intel processors).

The automatic update feature of SlideMagic will not switch you over to the new version. You will have to re-install SlideMagic from the web site. From then on, updates will be for Apple Silicon.

Presentation software like PowerPoint or SlideMagic have 2 modes: one for slide editing, and one for showing the presentation to an audience. In video calls, I often see the presenter leaving the presentation in edit mode. The slide is visible, but with all the edit controls around, plus grid lines and other markings. On the side is a list of thumbnails of all the slides in the presentation. For the presenter, this can be handy. She knows the deck in and out and can quickly jump around the slides.

For the audience it is confusing.

• The slide in edit mode looks unfinished.
• Often the thumbnails on the left are so big that you could actually read them, distracting attention away from the main slide.

In SlideMagic, presentation view creates 2 separate windows: one for the slide to be shown to the audience, one with the controls for the presenter. So in Zoom, or other video conference tools, you can share just the slide, while staying in full control of the presentation in a window that is not visible to the audience.