Every time I see a talk at a conference with beautiful slides, I look up on the podium and discover a glowing white apple symbol on the speaker's laptop.

I have no reason to ever drop any amount of money on a Mac.

I simply don't need one for work. I'm used to the Windows environment and can work faster when my "work laptop" is a PC. I'm not the kind of developer who relies upon Unix and Macs for my day-to-day. Nor am I the kind who needs to own my own laptop at home (bringing home my "work" laptop suffices).

Is Google Slides the best I can do with respect to "prettiness" while having a free, safe offline option during a presentation?

Because let's face it, PowerPoint is a beast to make attractive.

Note: I'm mostly interested in how "pretty" my slides are for "cat meme"-style decks -- see this Dev post:

Talks slides are not a presentation deck

Heidi Waterhouse ・ Nov 15 '17 ・ 4 min read

#launchdarkly #speaking #slidedecks #slides

I know it sounds stupid, but I feel like if I had an easy time making "aesthetically pleasing" slides, I could feel more at ease improvising and gesturing and engaging with the audience in front of them. Like the way working can be easier when your desk is clean. They'd make me happy to look at, and in turn I feel like I'd radiate that back out to the room.

Thanks, everyone!