Macs rule! But let's not be stupid about it...

The medical community seem to be committed Mac users.  At our recent Departmental Research Day, several presenters made that clear.  But, in a counter-productive way...


The laptop being used for presentations at Research Day was a PC, but several physicians brought their own Mac laptops. Great to see other Mac users promoting the cause, but it turned out to be a distraction. Because they had brought their laptops (rather than just the presentation on a memory stick) there was an annoying delay between presentations while the PC was disconnected from the LCD projector and the Mac was connected.

This was completely unnecessary for some presenters, as they had used PowerPoint on the Mac and could have easily loaded their presentation onto the PC via a memory stick. I do that regularly and the only compatibility issue I have is if I've used pictures from iPhoto without changing their format to a PC-compatible one. I've been burned on that before and so am in the habit of checking such presentations on my office PC.

Other Mac users/presenters were obviously using Keynote, and so couldn't run that program on a PC. I say "obviously using", when perhaps I should say "obtrusively using", i.e. "Hey, I'm using this cool, Mac-only program. Look at these wicked fonts and catchy transitions I can do!" Those bells and whistles are amusing for exactly 2 slides and then they are a distraction from your presentation's message. If that's the only reason you're using Keynote... don't do it. Stick with PowerPoint (on your Mac, of course) and save us the nuisance of switching platforms between presentations.

I admit that I use Keynote for one particular presentation that requires an animation that PowerPoint can't handle. That means I have to take my laptop along whenever I give that presentation. After experiencing the annoyance of several computer changes at Research Day, I'm seriously reconsidering whether that single animation is really worth the grief of lugging a laptop around, rather than just carrying PowerPoint on a memory stick.

Of course, the ultimate solution would be for the AV people to smarten up and start using Mac laptops. As Macs can run either Mac or PC, it makes more sense to be using the more versatile platform.