Steve Jobs was famous for his keynote presentations, which combined showmanship with beautifully designed slides to generate his trademark ‘reality distortion field.’

But what few people knew at the time was, he didn’t use a Mac to produce those slides. Not until 2002, at least. Instead he relied on a little-known app called Concurrence on his trusty NeXT computer.

Jobs loved this app so much, he hired its creator to work on a top secret project at Apple. The result was Keynote, an app specially designed to meet Jobs exacting presentation requirements.

Thanks to the power of Quartz, the Mac OS X graphics layer, the frame rate and silky-smooth 3D transitions of Keynote blew other presentation packages like PowerPoint out of the water. 

Keynote formed the basis of Apple’s iWork office productivity suite we know and love today.

In this episode, we chart the thirty-year history of Apple office productivity apps, and consider what it tells us about the company’s changing business model.

LINKS

Concurrence screenshots
https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Concurrence

Steve Jobs launches Keynote at MacWorld 2003
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTF9wnTPpK0

Roger Rosner demos iWork ’05 at MacWorld 2005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLxI40utsLM

Apple announces completion of iWork suite with the addition of Numbers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pb_OIBW4Ys

iPad launch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTNbKCAFHJo

Steve Jobs announces iWork with iCloud in his last keynote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPMjUtfQPks

Plan for iWork overhaul announced at WWDC 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIigp_bxUcQ

Eddy Cue announces complete rewrite of all iWork apps with full file compatibility at a Special Event in October 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FunXnJQxYU