Keynote System Requirements

Make sure you are aware of the system requirements for Keynote and the rest of the iWork programs before you buy a retail box. That's one of the reasons why you should download a trial version of the product.

The current version, Keynote 08 (or Keynote 4) runs on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard only (and later versions of OS X). And if you are running an earlier version of OS X, you'll have to find an earlier version of Keynote and iWork as well (or upgrade your OS X version).

You can find older versions of Keynote and OS X on auction sites like eBay but be aware that the newest version of Keynote always has more features. Also, you might not be able to open Keynote presentations created in the new version inside older versions of Keynote, although the opposite is not true.

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Getting a Trial Version of Keynote (and iWork)

Unless your Mac came with a trial version of iWork, you'll want to download the evaluation from the Apple site. You'll also want to get the trial version if you are using an earlier version of Keynote and iWork -- and want to see all the new improvements before you buy a retail copy of iWork.

You can download the trial version from the Apple iWork Trial page, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Apple iWork Trial Download

As you can see in the figure above, the current version of iWork is iWork 08 that includes Keynote 08.

Be prepared for a long download though -- as of today, the download is a whopping 469 megabytes.

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Do I already have Keynote?

If you bought a new Mac, chances are you already have a trial version of Apple iWork that includes Keynote. Even otherwise, you can download a trial version of iWork from the Apple site. However before you download the trial, just check if you already have iWork. To do that, follow these steps:

On your Mac Dock, click the Finder option (normally the first option from the left) to launch the Finder.
In the left pane of the Finder, click Applications to see a list of installed applications in your Mac (as shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Applications in your Mac
Scroll down the list, and you'll find a folder called iWork -- my folder is called iWork 08 since "08" denotes the version of the programs contained within the iWork suite. Your version may have a different suffix -- that doesn't matter. For now, just double click the folder.
Inside the folder, you'll find a shortcut for Keynote (and perhaps for Pages and Numbers as well) as you can see in Figure 2.

Figure 2: iWork folder within your Applications folder
Double-click the Keynote shortcut to launch the program.

If your copy of Keynote is a trial version, it will run for the trial period.

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