The Mobile Presenter

This article may seem somewhat off-topic for this blog, but it is at least partially relevant for those of us who use their iPad for presenting:

One of the limitations of the iPad (and other iOS devices) is that you are stuck with the fonts that Apple provides. There is no official way to add custom fonts. I'm usually somewhat conservative in my choice of fonts anyway, but sometimes, it would be nice to have a fancy font for special effects.

A developer has now found a way to install custom fonts on devices running iOS 7. It is in no way officially sanctioned, so it may stop working at any time with a future iOS update. On the other hand, as I understand it, it's not really a "hack" either, since it uses a feature that was only introduced in iOS 7 (though maybe not for this purpose).

In any case, the app is called AnyFont and you should use it at your own risk.

Note: This article will not do PowerPoint justice since I do not have an Office 365 subscription - and without it, you can't edit presentations in this version of PowerPoint; you can only view and present them.

Rumours about an iOS version of Microsoft's Office suite have been floating around for a long time. Apparently, it was mainly held up by company politics. Now that Microsoft has a new CEO, some of those politics seem to have changed and Office for iOS is available from the AppStore. The price? The apps are free, but you need a subscription to Microsoft's Office 365 service to create new documents or edit existing ones. The service costs $10/€10 per month or $99/€99 per year for home use (other pricing options available for businesses and for students). This applies to all 3 apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).

I'm only going to look at PowerPoint here - without the subscription, so I'll only be able to use it to view PowerPoint presentations.

Last year, I came across the Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer Mobile Presenter and to my delight, it worked as advertised. Finally a "normal" remote control that worked with my iPad. It's so much nicer to use than the rather clunky iPhone or iPod with Keynote Remote on it.

And then Apple released iOS 7 and Keynote for iOS 2.0 and the Satechi remote stopped working. Bummer.

A few days ago, I received an email from Satechi support pointing out that things seem to be working again now with iOS 7.1 and Keynote 2.1, which triggered me to try it out again. Here's what I found:

Among the many updates for its hardware and software products that Apple released this week was an all-new version of Keynote for iOS, now sporting a 2.0 version number.

I haven't looked into the actual feature set yet, but the most obvious change is that it now comes with a UI in the style of iOS 7. It also features better support for the iOS accessibility features, something that the previous version had implemented only partially.

What's good news for those who have to rely on better accesssibility turns out to be bad news for users of the Satechi Smart Pointer Bluetooth Remote, though. In short, the 2.0 update renders the remote pretty much useless for controlling a presentation.

Keynote for iOS has come a long way if you compare it with the very first version that came out with the original iPad back in 2010. Probably the most important feature that Apple added later was supporting a remote control.

However, this feature only works with the Keynote Remote app running on another iOS device. You can not use a regular remote control with iOS devices. That is, you could not do that until now. Enter the Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer.