Why do Mac users use Powerpoint and Firefox?
January 20th, 2007 by Marcos
I’ve noticed a reasonable number of Macintosh users who, when giving a presentation, use Powerpoint rather than Apple’s Keynote. Furthemore, there is another group (with some overlap) who use Firefox(not even the more Mac-like Camino).
Obviously, these are matters of personal preference - but I wonder how many Mac users use Firefox because they have heard how much better it is than Internet Explorer. And while it is certainly true that Windows users should use Firefox, on the Mac I personally don’t see the point. Safari is a much better and more Mac-like browser, in my opinion - and if you need a Mozilla browser, Camino is vastly more Mac-like in its behavior. I haven’t noticed that Firefox is any faster than Safari. For a while Firefox had better HTTP proxy support, but this is no longer true in Tiger.
As far as Keynote goes, there is seems to be a growing belief that Keynote is just better at producing higher quality presentations than Powerpoint.
My theory on Powerpoint is this - in the Microsoft Office hegemony in which we live, most people - even many Mac users - associate “presentation” with “Powerpoint” and aren’t aware of alternatives. Also, many universities and or businesses have site licenses for Office so many people just use what they have.
Hence, my latest highly unscientific poll - of the people who visit this site - are those who use Powerpoint doing so because they prefer it or because they haven’t tried Keynote? We’ll see what the results show.
My personal reasons for using Keynote (and also Pages for posters)? It supports vector PDF graphics. Powerpoint will take an EPS or PDF file and rasterize it - Keynote just keeps it in its glorious resolution-free state. That alone is reason enough for me.
UPDATE : I will go ahead and concede that if you have browsing issues with Safari it’s perfectly ok to try another browser. BUT, might I suggest the much more Mac-like Camino, which uses the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox but isn’t a multi-platform UNIX-like program. Camino uses Mac-specfic features like the address book, the keychain, has spell-checking in text fields, etc. I can see how those coming from other platforms would … not miss a program that ignores these Mac specific abilities, but to me - a Mac application should act like it belongs on a Mac; not behave like a Linux program.
Update II Ok, ok. I get it. Extensions. I never use Firefox or Firefox extensions so I guess I just don’t know what I’m missing. I personally find Firefox so un-Mac-like I just don’t even consider it an option. However, the buzz is they are trying to make it behave more like a Mac like application (ala Camino) so we’ll see how it evolves.
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Matt Ramos Says
I like Firefox for the plethora of extensions.
Jan 27th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Alex R. Says
I like Firefox because it’s familiar, and I use it on my Linux boxes too.
Feb 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Alex R. Says
… although I totally agree about Keynote. It’s lovely and quick and not over-complicated, and it makes beautiful presentations! Convention over configuration!
Feb 6th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Cheryl Says
I’d love to use Keynote, but my presentations (and teaching) are always in Windows-only rooms. (And what classroom response systems work with Keynote? To my knowledge, Turning Point doesn’t.) Firefox typically runs faster for me, and at the time I switched, was compatible with more web sites than Safari was.
Feb 13th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Matt Davis Says
FireFox seems to be more eager to show pages designed for an audience assumed to only use Internet Explorer. If a link in Safari produces anything from a badly formatted mess to a blank page, it’s time to fire up FireFox. If a web designer can’t do a website that works in THAT, I’m not interested in the site, nor the client that doesn’t care about it.
Safari isn’t perfect, Mac PPT sucks over the PC version, and KeyNote differs from PowerPoint in being a display vehicle over a creation vehicle.
You need a drawing package, a paint package and maybe even an outliner to work with KeyNote, whereas PPT is an all-rounder, adequtate at most things (good screen/print options) and excelling at none (it doesn’t play back movies well, especially in laptop/two screen mode, its typography is lousy, its builds require silly workarounds, the file format leads to size problems, it doesn’t link to external media well, some media requires geeky workarounds, I could go on…). KeyNote is unfinished, and PowerPoint is getting arthritis.
Mar 16th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Adam Says
I’m new to Mac and I have never used keynote. As for firefox, over Safari it is not that I am just used to it, it just works more reliably. Here’s how I see it, Safari passes the acid2 test, IE fails miserably, but if things are designed to look correct on IE it means they will be rendered differently on Safari. You can call it right and say it’s doing a good job, but you are still not seeing what the designer intended. Also with tabs, I have found Safari buggy. I clicked on a link and it opened a new window, but I wanted a new tab so i closed the window and command clicked on it. This created a new window, and this window had both tabs. Firefox just did it right from the start. Normally closing a window would be no problem, but I’m using a touchpad not a mouse…
Apr 2nd, 2007 at 10:59 pm
joe in oklahoma Says
i have always used safari until lately, when it seemed to get less stable (it was crashing on me at least once a day). i like camino, and camino and firefox give me more access to google tools than safari, and firefox has browser sync, which allows me to be consistent across a number of computers.
those access issues and session restore are the dealbreakers, although safari does other things well, and even at times renders pages better than FF or camino. if safari ever dovetails better with google apps, i will try it again.
Aug 15th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Gil Bates Says
why do i use firefox?
extensions! extensions! extensions!
or should i say, add-ons. i don’t know why they changed the name. i cannot live with my 5 little web developer extensions. and since the majority of my time using a browser is for work, i’ve become used to it’s controls. so when it comes to me time, i don’t want to learn a whole new program just to read fark
i would gladly switch to camino if only they had the same support for add-ons.
Sep 4th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Jamez Says
Well I would love to use camino as a browser, but at the moment there is a bug in camino that will not let you save pictures, or any files in that case. I use powerpoint, mainly because it was along first, so if iwork was around as apposed to appleworks 4 years ago then i would of jumped at the opportunity to replace the dated appleworks suite.
Nov 15th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
counter Says
I like firefox more because of extensions. Camino and others don’t support them. I’m forced to use powerpoint because of 3rd party plugins that don’t work with keynote. So I’m forced.
Jan 5th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Tom Says
“And while it is certainly true that Windows users should use Firefox, on the Mac I personally don’t see the point.”
LOL, what arrogance! Because some people want different features than you, that’s why. Maybe if Steve Jobs didn’t have the same level of arrogance, Safari would be extensible and people wouldn’t feel the need to make such silly statements as the one above.
Jan 12th, 2008 at 11:16 am