Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a popular computer-controlled presentation program for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems.

History

Although now a Microsoft product, PowerPoint was originally developed by Bob Gaskins, a former Berkeley Ph.D. student who envisioned an easy-to-use presentation program that would manipulate a string of single pages, or "slides". In 1984, Gaskins joined a failing Silicon Valley software firm called Forethought and hired a software developer, Dennis Austin. Their prototype program was called "Presenter". Due to trademarking issues, its name was changed to PowerPoint. PowerPoint 1.0 was released in 1987 and was originally only available for the Apple Macintosh, and only in black-and-white. It generated text-and-graphics pages that a photocopier could turn into overhead transparencies.

Later in 1987, Forethought and PowerPoint were purchased by Microsoft Corporation for a price of $14 million. In 1988 the first Windows and DOS version was produced. It has since been a standard part of Microsoft's Office suite of tools.

Concept

In PowerPoint and other presentation software in general, objects such as images and text being placed on each slide retain their position regardless of other objects already placed. This approach is intuitive for beginning users. This differs from desktop publishing software, where the flow of text or images on the page may be affected by the images or other objects placed on the page.

Criticisms and Effects on Today's Business

The widespread use of Powerpoint for presentation has given rise to a trend in some business circles for increasingly elaborate presentations, with extensive use of artwork, animation, and even multimedia. This is similar to the introduction of desktop publishing, which led to more elaborate small-scale publication. Many people have decried this trend as the "triumph of presentation over content", as satirized in many Dilbert cartoons, and led several prominent executives in the information technology industry, amongst others, to declare their offices "PowerPoint-free zones". Others have also criticized the software for its tendency to cause users to conform their presentations and thoughts into briefly summarized essences, presented in abrupt bullet-point sequence. Furthermore, many users tend to rely on the software to explain their point for them to the audience, rather than as a tool to supplement their own ability to express their thoughts.

Recent Features

The 2002 version, part of the Office XP Professional suite and also available as a stand-alone product, provides features such as comparing and merging changes in presentations, the ability to define animation paths for individual shapes, pyramid/radial/target diagrams, multiple slide masters, a "task pane" to view and select text and objects on the clipboard, password protection for presentations, automatic "photo album" generation, and the use of "smart tags" to allow users to quickly select the format of text copied into the presentation.