Back on October 18, 2017, I offered a tip on presenting with the iPad — creating a reading version of a speech/presentation in Pages that was formatted with a large enough font size to be easily read at a podium. I didn’t think it was rocket science then and don’t know.

With the latest release of Pages, however, the need to create a second copy is gone. Apple has programmed in Presenter Mode, which automatically resizes the font as I had described.

In addition, it switches (by default) to a dark mode, providing a high-contrast screen and reducing light for dimly lit rooms. It also has an autoscroll feature (with a modifiable scroll speed). The autoscroll starts and stops with a tap of the screen.

This is a really nice feature — one that will quietly make presenting much easier for iPad users (Thus far, I have not seen a parallel option appear in the MacOS version of Pages.). It also points to Apple’s method, as posited by Steve Jobs in an often quoted part of Walter Isaacson’s biography of him: “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”' People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”[1]

[1] This idea is going to be central to my upcoming reaction to Apple’s Education event. If you want some homework in advance of that post, you should take a look at Bradley Chambers’ well reasoned and well written response on 9 to 5 Mac.

Dr. Matthew M. DeForrest is a Professor of English and the Mott University Professor at Johnson C. Smith University. The observations and opinions he expresses here are his own. You are very welcome to follow him on Twitter and can find his academic profile at Academia.edu.