Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Ars v. Tufte

My problem with Ars Technica’s preview of Google Presentations isn’t so much with their writing, but with the entire premise. It can be summed up in these little tasty treats:

Having spent nearly a decade working with PowerPoint during my time at McKinsey & Company (I use PowerPoint 2004 to create all of the charts seen in Ars articles), I found myself intrigued by Google Presentations. I wondered if it could truly replicate the functionality of PowerPoint, how much flexibility it offered users, and how polished the end products would look. At the risk of causing you to stop reading here, the answers are “not really,” “not much,” and “not very.”

Here’s the thing. PowerPoint sucks. It sucks on a nearly epic scale. The best thing about the first version of Keynote was that it didn’t have 75% of PowerPoint’s functionality. That was a good thing. Most things in PowerPoint are useless at best, and a brain-melting disaster of bullet-point hell. I don’t want lots of clip-art, animations, or dancing paper clips. I don’t want sparkly text.

The use of themes is about the only way to punch up the visual impact of a Google Presentation. There is no way to create a text box with a fill, put text in an oval box (or even create an oval, for that matter), or change the default font face and sizes. Transitions and animations? Forget about it.

So? Seriously, so what? Most of those things are simply over-used cliches for half-assed, ill-thought-out “presentations” that often are described as Death by Powerpoint. You want impact? Say something useful.

There are doubtlessly many problems with this latest addition to Google Apps, but lack of rococo gee-gaws is hardly a good place to look.