Generally, new features first appear in the Windows version of PowerPoint (at least until PowerPoint for the Web was conceived. If you’re using PowerPoint regularly to create masterpieces, you need to know what features are, or are not, supported by each platform. They are the brains behind our free PowerPoint design and productivity add-in BrightSlide and a lot more good stuff! They have also spent a lot of time contemplating (and being frustrated by) what we can do with add-ins in Windows that we can’t on Mac. The second is the ‘developer brain’: this is our add-ins development team! This team spend a lot of time thinking about how we can push PowerPoint far beyond its native capabilities. The first is the ‘user brain’: like many of you, we use PowerPoint every day to create presentations, videos, documents and more. Here at BrightCarbon we have a rather unique perspective on compatibility because we tend to look at PowerPoint with two brains.

These days things have improved, but there are still a few key differences between the two desktop platforms of the world’s favourite presentation design software. There were so many things missing in PowerPoint for Mac compared to the Windows version.

Once upon a time, on desktops far, far away, there was PowerPoint for Windows and something very very different for Mac… If you remember PowerPoint:mac 2011, you might still have recurring nightmares about the amount of effort it took to create presentations.