Ranting in Anger and Frustration

This is a frustrating day. The call that was bumped from yesterday to this morning still hasn't happened (and it ain't mornin' anymore). I didn't ask this guy to call - I just asked him for the name of the guy who's in my space, and I don't think he is. Oh well, maybe he's trying to be nice and is busied out.

But most frustrating is that I've been trying to use Apple's Keynote application as an alternative to Powerpoint. I'm a big mac fan, and most things are well thought out, but this is frickin P-ing me O.

First things first (I may as well go into full rant mode). First, they've called the thing Keynote. Try and search google on that and their app is lost in a sea of websites about keynote speeches and speakers. Even "Apple Keynote" buries you under every speech Jobs ever gave. They should have called it iWorkPresentoMagicThingy at least then I could find some discussion about it.

Next, have they never used powerpoint? Other than novices, if you are a power user on powerpoint, you cannot live without the style paintbrush, or the "Repeat Last Action" CMD-Y shortcut. It is insane without those! Now granted, you usually need the paintbrush 'cause PPT is so lousy at formatting that is screws things up and the brush lets you repair quickly.

But jeeze - I needed to make 5 references superscript. That took bloody forever without CMD-Y For each one, it's mouse up to the menu select font, baseline, superscript. And it's never easy to find. It was probably 2minutes as opposed to 15sec on PPT.

Also, worse was changing the font on a bunch of Titles. Man, picking the font replacement out of the long scrolly list of hundreds of fonts each time was like torture! Much swearing was heard. Yes, I know I could go create a new master slide for this one situation and apply that, but it would have been even longer. Yet with a 'repeat' shortcut, or hell, even a pull down menu item that evokes a 'repeat' I could have done it in seconds. I did later find a copy style function under format, but where is the repeat!?

The pain is palpable. I feel like my legs are tied together and I'm walking through molasses. And I'm not either a novice user nor am I an anti-change type. I'm all for embracing new apps. This is just too painful though.

The thing looks much nicer than PPT, and finding the different ways of doing things is fine - I can live with different yet available. But when fundamental quick working elements are missing in favour of long laborious steps, ughh...

Maybe Keynote 2009 is better than 2008, but I guess I need to go back to MSOffice 2003. Sheesh.

Anyway - when is that phone call going to come. How lame is that.

Researchinator returns to the angry removal of hair from head...