The Mobile Presenter

For years, my equipment for giving presentations was my trusty old iBook 12" (800 MHz, 640 MB of RAM), nicknamed "amalthea". I can't even remember how long I had it or how many presentations I gave with it. And then one day, a volcano erupted and in the ensuing chaos while travelling back from a conference, I managed to lose it.

So now I have to start looking for a replacement. But that's not as easy as it may seem, at least for me.

The iBook was already getting a bit long in the tooth, but I was holding on to it since it was nice and small. Sure, it was a lot thicker than any other current Apple laptop, but its footprint was much smaller than that of, say, a 13" MacBook.

What other alternatives are there? Well, there are Netbooks and all sorts of smallish laptops. But they all have one fatal - for me - flaw: They don't run Mac OS X (at least not officially) and therefore don't run what is the killer application for me: Keynote, Apple's presentation program.

Back in January 2010 - three months before I lost my iBook - Apple introduced the iPad, their tablet computer. I was following the live tickers on the web but wasn't too impressed with it initially. That is, until they mentioned that there would also be a version of Keynote for the iPad. Now that got my attention!

So, I thought, let's see: When I'm on the road and need to give a presentation, what else do I need? Email and web, of course. Being able to preview photos I took during the trip. Well, and that's basically it - everything else is really only a bonus. I guess the iPad does all that nicely (and a bit more). And so I decided to give it a try. Since I'm in Europe and it's only May 23 as I write this, I will have to wait another 5 days before my iPad ships (on time, I hope). And then the real adventure begins ...

Yes, I've read everything I could get my hands (or should that be: "eyes"?) on about Keynote on the iPad. I know about the limitations. We'll see how bad they really are. Right now, my main concern is - absurdly - that apparently I won't be able to use my favourite Keynote theme (Storyboard). So maybe I will come to the conclusion that the iPad is not for me (or at least not for me giving presentations with it) and maybe the search for the ultimate light-weight presentation gear will continue. The only thing I know right now is that while I'm slowly getting over the loss of my trusty ol' iBook, there are exciting new experiences waiting for me. And I will document them on this website.

"About This Site" by Dirk Haun is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.