How much would you pay for iA Presenter, from the makers of iA Writer?

1

We haven’t had a thread for iA Presenter here yet. From the makers of the sharp and elegant iA Writer:

Has anyone had the chance to play with it? I’m hoping it can work with regular markdown files without an import/export hell circle.

You’re also probably interested in their latest blog post on how to price the app. It includes a form in the form of a typical e-commerce shopping cart:

1 Like
2

I’m struggling to determine the used case for a mark down presentation application when I have the free Keynote. I don’t think Apple is going anywhere, so I’m not concerned about “future proofing“ my Keynote presentations. My question is not rhetorical, it is genuine. What is the use case and value proposition for this?

3

I was just about to post this yersterday. I registered for their beta, so I hope I have a chance to play with it. Looks fine, however, sometimes I like to “fine tune” and deeply customize a slide which this iA Presenter doesn’t let you do.

4

I hear ya. I am a wizard with PowerPoint / Keynote. My slides aren’t presentations, they are art, damnit.

Still, going straight from a Markdown file to a set of nice slides — without an import/export or re-jigging — would be valuable.

Even moreso if we can export those into Keynote for the final polish and a bit of wizardry.

This is my exact question, too! Hopefully the options aren’t so limited that every slide deck from this app looks the same.

5

I love the whole idea. The designs, responsive slides, teleprompter.

I don’t give presentations that need slides, but I’m finding myself looking for an excuse to fit it in my sales workflow. I’d pay $30-50 for it.

6

I would also consider it at that price, depending on functionality, maturity and polish (it’s about the same as iA Writer today, though that used to be much cheaper). As long as it’s not a subscription…

7

This was my impression after playing with the beta. It does offer “themes,” but even that felt really basic, and not a replacement for a proper slide app like Keynote or PowerPoint.

I didn’t spend a ton of time with it though, so that could be operator error on my part.

1 Like
8

I haven’t had a chance to explore this at length but it looks and sounds similar in concept to the app Deckset that I used for a while. In the end however I found it too restrictive (built primarily for slides that are long lists of bullets although it can handle image embedding) resulting in “samey” slides that didn’t allow as much flexibility as Keynote?

2 Likes
9

I’ve not used it, but I can think of use cases for a basic, markdown-based presentation tool. For example in church we display Bible verses and song lyrics. We do not need anything fancy for that*, just clean, readable text that is very quick to assemble.

The point here seems to be to allow information to be prepared in an attractive format with very little effort, say just before a team meeting, not necessarily as a company’s main sales deck. I like the idea of separation of content and style.

*we use specialist software, but the point remains :grinning:

1 Like
10

I have Deckset which is similar, but only use it for simple slideshows.

1 Like
11

Neither does iA Writer - unless you get your hands dirty on HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create your own theme. Which you can do - but they’re not making it easy (through a GUI editor) or holding your hand much. On top of that, iA Writer has very limited “range” in the number of fonts and templates they’re shipping.

I wouldn’t expect anything else from iA Presenter (and their trailer video fits the idea too):

A text (Markdown) based app that allows you to create sleek-looking slides with minimal effort.
With meticulously crafted design and templates - but limited (in-app) customisation options.

Opinionated.

That’s what iA Writer and similar apps have been called (rather fancily).
And I wouldn’t be surprised to read the same in reviews of iA Presenter.

1 Like
12

Restrictive is the perfect definition. Markdown is restrictive in a sense, you’ll never use that markup language for polishing something you are going to give to an editor, a boss or even your teacher. Markdown is great to focus in the content AND LATER polish everything with another app.

I think the same applies to this app or Deckset. Something fast? Yeah no problem. You need to create a professional slideshow? Then you’ll have to use PowerPoint or Keynote.

1 Like
13

I’ve played around with the iA Presenter beta. I think their (opinionated) point of view would be that the presenter’s performance is the art and the slide deck is the supporting player.

I like the beta quite a bit and will probably pay for it when the release version comes out.

1 Like
14

I find the idea of going from idea to presentation so quickly pretty compelling. iA Presenter won’t be for complex presentations, but can help get ideas out there quickly and very nice looking. If all you need is pictures and big text, this will work amazingly. If you need tables and graphs, perhaps not so much.

Obsidian has a presentation mode that is nowhere near as polished.

As for pricing, it’ll be hard to compete with the free options out there. The differentiator of iA Presenter is the lack of fuss in creating a quick presentation. That’s worth something. Maybe $2-4/month or $20 a year. I’m sure they’ll charge more around $40-50/year. That’s harder to stomach.

1 Like