Contrary to what Microsoft haters and Apple lovers may think, Microsoft didn’t deliberately screw up PowerPoint. It gradually happened by accident.
It all started a few decades ago when slide presentations meant shooting 35mm Kodachrome or Ektachrome slides. You needed a slide projector, usually made by Kodak, to display your slides. Vacation slide shows were popular and extremely boring. People would explain each slide. Relatives and friends had to live through the ordeal. Regular people showed slides…with no captions. Some “pros” were able to use slide copying devices that were able to add captions.
To make things more interesting, creative folks started to use two slide projectors simultaneously. This quickly become a “professional” way of showing slides. Devices were invented that controlled the slide projectors and created more interesting presentations. Music was even added.
And then there were computers. Now, pictures could be put on the screen or through the LCD projector. PowerPoint was born to make the slide presentation process easier. There’s no question that PowerPoint made things easier. The problem was that all the bad qualities of old-fashioned slide shows were also magnified. The number of special effects multiplied. The number of ways to add text multiplied. The boredom multiplied.
The original idea of showing pictures still works best. The fewer effects and the less text the better. It’s up to the presenter to tell the story and use the PowerPoint slides to illustrate the key points. The less noticeable the PowerPoint, the better the presentation.
Microsoft had good intentions. PowerPoint was never the problem. The speakers who use it created the problems.