Lion and Keynote Problems

Can someone help me? I'm experiencing none of the problems being cited, and using latest versions of whatever everyone's using, complex slides (also >2GB in size in some cases) and many start up operations (which I switch off when giving a presentation, but not when creating it).

I've given several critical keynotes (including to Apple Distinguished Educators) and nothing's happened that I didn't plan for...

The only problem I did have was last month when I fell out of Keynote back to the desktop (fortunately converted to my first slide as my theme) when I ran out of juice after believing I was plugged into the AC.

This is not meant as a skite, but it bothers me when I hear people have forsaken KN for PPT and Apple seems not to have a reasonable and timely response.

Les Posen FAPS

I have a iMac 3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7, SSD 256 root drive and a 2 TB secondary with 16GB of memory. Three weeks old with Lion installed. I have a Keynote deck with 21 slides. Some text, 2 videos 144MB each and 1 560Mb movie. Entirely new deck and the progress wheel spins every five minutes for 30-40 sec. Tried all of the good suggestions above and no changes. Checked the activity monitor and CPU is under 5%, system memory available is 15GB, Disk activity appears normal. However checking the logs do find event hang which lasts for .40s

Those of you having issues might want to copy your system diagnostic report for keynote and send to apple support or force quit and send to apple with your comments.

I also work on a MacBook Air i7 and not seeing the same behavior with 4GB of RAM and SSD nor seeing the same console errors using the same file. Hard to replicate across both devices.

I did get one interesting error message yesterday that told me to close down some applications (only had two open) saying my disk space was low (swap) on startup drive. That was interesting considering have 179GB free and nothing showing on activity monitor.

BTW have run repair disk permissions, removed keynote .plist with to no avail.

Hi Les -

No one is taking on KN here. There are some issues and people are looking to get some feedback on how to solve their issues. I have worked with KN since launch and have current hardware. I have replicated what folks are concerened about. And I do love KN. Hopefully we will see a solution soon.

I hope more than a solution is found.

I witnessed a demo of iMovie 11 by a retail Apple reseller last night (There are still a few left in Australia), after helping someone that afternoon play with iMovie HD from a few year's back.

I saw the next Keynote Pro X in action I believe, and reckon this is why it's taking so long between versions. I think we're in for a major rewrite so leap frog Powerpoint and Prezi in both look and functionality, particularly in supporting AirPlay and iPad equivalency, perhaps when a beefier iPad 3 is released in a few months.

Until then, I'll have to work out what I'm doing right to not have many of these reported problems. I know it's incredibly frustrating otherwise.

We keep hammering away at Apple in the meantime....

Les

Sad but true:

Today i spoke to a Second Level Apple Support Engineer. He was very helpful and tried everything. He said that there is no and will not be an official solution for the problem. But he remembered a "backdoor solution" to disable autosave in lion. But he could not find it. After more than an hour he gave up and adviced me to use Microsoft PowerPoint! For real! He strongly recommended to give feedback to apple as often as possible! So guys go ahead!

I think a silent majority will just gradually dump keynote and use powerpoint. I cannot believe Apple are allowing this to happen! Here's my prediction - the next major keynote speech by Apple post Jobs will have to be delivered to the audience using powerpoint!

www.apple.com/feedback

please everybody leave a feedback there! Apple is not monitoring this support forum!

Belalla, one would think that the fact this site has had 23536 views would cause someone at Apple to take notice! ( I still use the feedback route though)

I would take with a piece of salt what Apple support on the phone tell you - they are not at the developmnet or cutting edge (bless them). I work closely with Apple and discussed this with a senior member of the systems engineering staff. They hold me that Apple are aware of the issue and are working on it. Saying this, as ever Apple keep delivery dates close to their chest.

Hi. See a little or a lot of Keynote bashing and some swapping of ignorance around what is going on with Keynote. I posted here a day ago about the issues I was having with it. On really close examination of processes, it wasn't really an issue with Keynote but with QT X. I had a significant impact of CPU cycles. Keynote relies on the QT platform and OpenCL framework to play embedded movies. I was getting consistent 51% CPU use even when movies weren't playing. Capturing the process noted where things were hanging. Just to be sure created an entirely new account opened same files again - no issues no run away PIDs. Captured and forwarded to Apple.

Again don't fault Keynote on this too simplistic. Lot's of engineering teams at Apple involved. Not sure who Steve above is talking to but probably not someone in the know.

That's very helpful. A deeper diagnosis of the surface symptom. It isn't so much Keynote "bashing" as it is the fact the Keynote is where the problem presents itself. Much like a patient complaining of an ache in the knee only to find it's a compressed disk at L5. Still, Apple should have caught this in a prime piece of productivity software. Embedding videos is not exactly a "power user" thing. For the user, it may be a QT X / OpenCL issue, but it's a Keynote problem. And the solution is mighty slow in coming.

Thank you for your input into this debate. It is, as with all softawre faults a problem within a complex ecosystem and as my contact is a senior manager from the Systems Engineering Division of Apple and not as you politly put it "someone who is not in the know", I have no reason to doubt him.

This forum if for people to share their comments and ideas; and whilst yours was equally as informative of mine politeness would have been evidenced by the lack of the final sentence which added nothing to the debate.

I say this in the kindest possible way and hope to continue to add some form of value to the debate.

Professor Steve Molyneux

Steve, the good news for me is that you are talking to someone at a senior level in Apple, therefore they are aware of the issue and will no doubt be concerned enough to get it resolved.

Steve -

I am not sure why you decided to make this personal. But you made a comment, "I would take with a piece of salt what Apple support on the phone tell you - they are not at the developmnet or cutting edge (bless them)." My comments above were made as a software developer who has taken time to diagnoise the issues with Keynote that I had and spent considerable time on multiple devices replicating the issue. The results weren't with Keynote but plugins and QT. This particular thread is to solve the issue of why users are experiencing issues with Keynote not play one upsmanship with contacts or put someone down because they actually defend the work that the systems and applications teams are doing to keep us working. Glad you are an ADE and in the know we really appreciate your support. Love to see some Keynote solutions you have discovered to help on this thread.

I've been following the post for some weeks given my own difficulties with Lion and Keynote (embedded videos and files of 8 Gigs or so) with the program invariably freezing even when I try to save a small text change. In reality for a "surface" user like myself with neither the talent nor time for system adjustments I have no choice but to revert to PowerPoint, which is a bit sad for a user committed to Macs for 22 years. I hope a fix can be found, but until then I don't feel there's any other option.