> The world should have learned what a great presentation is and what presentation software should be like.
The underlying difference can not be fixed by software, because software can't make you care about or value things: Jobs saw presentations as performances.
I don't mean that in a dismissive way, I mean that Jobs treated presentations as plays and musicals. Few people are willing (let alone able) to block out days in order to rehearse and fine tune a presentation. Even less so days of multiple people in order to get feedback and suggestions. In real world settings.
Even just rehearsing twice - once to yourself, perhaps in front of a camera to watch back and check timings, and once in front of a spouse or coworker - puts you ahead of 99% of corporate presenters.
And it shows. Even at large events half the presenters appear to have never even seen the deck before and revert to Storytime with CEO as they read the slides to you.
> Even at large events half the presenters appear to have never even seen the deck before
In my experience in academia, most of them wrote the slides just before going up to present
In fact it seems to be almost a badge of honour for the older professors. They pride themselves on giving lazy and unprepared talks. Why? Because it shows that they have earned not having to care anymore, they are powerful enough now that they don't have to perform
Also the slide deck is often dual purpose. Often it's an OK presentation, and an OK document for people who need you to break it into paragraphs and explain each paragraph.
Yes, Tufte hated this, because presentations should be presentations, and people should read the accompanying technical report.
Maybe I should rehearse, spend more money (normally out of my own pocket as I don't have access to a graphics staff), and otherwise prepare more for a conference presentation, which may be 50 people or fewer. But that's probably not realistic. I think I do a decent job in general. I could probably do better. But everything is a tradeoff.
The underlying difference can not be fixed by software, because software can't make you care about or value things: Jobs saw presentations as performances.
I don't mean that in a dismissive way, I mean that Jobs treated presentations as plays and musicals. Few people are willing (let alone able) to block out days in order to rehearse and fine tune a presentation. Even less so days of multiple people in order to get feedback and suggestions. In real world settings.