Enough of the bad vibes, let's move on to the good: A Real-World Keynote Review [Motley Fool Post of the Day].

Considering I knew nothing of Keynote (and I didn't even watch Steve's keynote introducing Keynote), I ventured out into the great unwashed known as the Internet to see what I could see. Could it handle a moving video background while displaying other objects on top? (Yes) What happens to the moving background when moving from slide to slide? (It unfortunately stops but if you design the background with that in mind and use the proper transitions, this transitional "bug" can be kept to a minimum). And as important as anything else, as this was untested software to me and I read that it did crash every now and then, was it stable enough to run for eight hours under the pressure of a live show?

(It turns out, "Yes.")

I'm always glad to see people pushing what Keynote can do this way; since it's all OpenGL-based, it's got a lot of horsepower under the hood for doing this kind of crazy out-of-control compositing. I notice a lot of reviewers tend to focus on how things like Cube Rotate are 3D-accelerated; what they tend to miss is that the 2D effects are all accelerated as well. Which is why your pretty digital photographs can slide in fullscreen at a smooth 60fps without hardly breaking a sweat, while that QuickTime movie is playing in the background.  9:36:23 PM  (comments [])   

Anyway.

Did I mention how stupidly irritating it is that Radio Userland keeps around a freaking hard-coded path to where it's installed? I'm currently running off the backup drive while the main machine is in the shop, but the backup drive fails to be called "Macintosh HD." Which gives this stupid program fits. I ended up copying it onto another partition, to be temporarily known as "Macintosh HD", until my laptop gets back from the tender loving care of the Shop. And, I'm told by recently received e-post, it's already on its way.

Also, while I'm pisssing and moaning, I'll point out how irritating it is to wake up and have a headache first thing in the morning that lingers around all day. Waaaaahhhhh!  9:22:23 PM  (comments [])