Keynote is a

presentation software A computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: * an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted * a m ...

application developed as a part of the

iWork iWork is an office suite of applications created by Apple Inc. for its macOS and iOS operating systems, and also available cross-platform through the iCloud website. It includes the presentation application Keynote, the word processing and ...

productivity suite by Apple Inc. Version 10 of Keynote for Mac, the latest major update, was released in March 2020. On January 27, 2010, Apple announced a new version of Keynote for

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operati ...

with an all-new touch interface. It is now also available for the iPhone to download from the

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...

History

Keynote began as a computer program for Apple CEO

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...

to use in creating the presentations for

Macworld Conference and Expo Macworld/iWorld was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Conference & Expos ...

and other Apple keynote events. Prior to using Keynote, Jobs had used Concurrence, from Lighthouse Design, a similar product which ran on the

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprieta ...

and

OPENSTEP OpenStep is a defunct object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification for a legacy object-oriented operating system, with the basic goal of offering a NeXTSTEP-like environment on non-NeXTSTEP operating systems. OpenStep wa ...

platforms. The program was first sold publicly as Keynote 1.0 in 2003, competing against existing presentation software, most notably

Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

. In 2005, Apple began selling Keynote 2.0 in conjunction with Pages, a new word processing and page layout application, in a software package called iWork. At the Macworld Conference & Expo 2006, Apple released iWork '06 with updated versions of Keynote 3.0 and Pages 2.0. In addition to official HD compatibility, Keynote 3 added new features, including group scaling, 3D charts, multi-column text boxes, auto bullets in any text field, image adjustments, and free-form masking tools. In addition, Keynote features three-dimensional transitions, such as a rotating cube or a simple flip of the slide. In the fall of 2007, Apple released Keynote 4.0 in iWork '08, along with Pages 3.0 and the new

Numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ca ...

spreadsheet application. On October 23, 2013, Apple redesigned Keynote with version 6.0, and made it free for anyone with a new iOS device or a recently purchased Mac.

Features

* Themes that allow the user to keep consistency in colors and fonts throughout the presentation, including charts, graphs, and tables. *

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...

-powered 3D slide transitions and builds that resemble rolling cubes or flipping pages, or dissolving transitions that fade one slide into the next. * Dual monitor support: the presenter can show the presentation on a screen and still see the desktop or notes from his laptop or presenter screen. * Exports to:

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

, PNG,

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

(with JPEG images) and

PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

. Keynote also uses .key (presentation files) and .kth (theme files) bundles based on

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...

. * Supports all

video formats (including

MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, w ...

and DV) in slideshows. * Version 3 brings export to

IDVD iDVD is a discontinued DVD authoring application for Mac OS produced by Apple Inc. iDVD allows the user to burn QuickTime movies, MP3 music, and digital photos to a DVD that can then be played on a commercial DVD player. It was often conside ...

with clickability. * Compatibility with Apple Remote and the Keynote remote application for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Keynote Remote

Keynote Remote was an iOS application that controlled Keynote presentations from an iPhone,

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a music pl ...

over a Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth connection and was released through the App Store. With the release of Keynote for iOS, the app was integrated into the new Keynote application and the stand-alone app was withdrawn.

Version history

References

External links