I was recently quoted in the Computer Reseller News article about Microsoft's Office 2008 feature to add iPhone and iPod presentation capabilities to Powerpoint when it's released early next year.
The official bit from Microsoft is here, but I have to say that I'm impressed by the Microsoft Mac team. It's a simple addition to Office - integration with iPhoto - but in doing so, they leverage the software developed by Apple to make integration with mobile devices a snap.
Basically, once your presentation is in iPhoto as jpegs - you can easily pop them into an iPhone or iPod, and then run it as a slide show on your device. Take the right cables, and you'll be able to do a presentation on the fly with just your iPhone and any projector. Très cool.
While it won't support advanced features like movies and transitions - and the quality will be less than that of a laptop (640x480 vs. 1024x768 or greater on a laptop), it's a nice solution for a quick one-off presentation, especially one you didn't plan on having.
For instance, I have one client in London who is starting a fashion business. She could take her portfolio on her iPhone - show it to one person in a meeting straight on the phone or a roomful of 20 people using a projector. All with the same device.
The elegance of the integration in Office 2008 is what impressed me most. As much as Mac users love to hate Microsoft, give the Microsoft Mac team props. They know how to make a great piece of software that gives us a bridge to the standards used on the PC world while integrating Mac-specific functionality at the same time.
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iPod
"For instance, I have one client in London who is starting a fashion business. She could take her portfolio on her iPhone - show it to one person in a meeting straight on the phone or a roomful of 20 people using a projector. All with the same device."
I actually set up a similar function for my mom for her company - but on the iPod. Instead of carting around a laptop and slides, I had her export her PowerPoint slides as jpegs, then just hook up to the A/V of any place where she happened to be doing the presentation. It's an extra step, but it still works in a pinch!
As the Mac platform gets
As the Mac platform gets more and more "Microsoft Friendly", my PC inventory will slowly fade away. The only thing that was a real thorn in my side was Blackberry compatibility with OSX but now that I run XP Pro virtually, I use the desktop manager on that and it works fine.
Just the fact that my machine can Run OSX and XP at the same time with not so much of a hiccup is a true testimonial of Mac power!