NC_2025_02_09
Jason Snell discusses creating impactful charts from Apple's earnings reports using Numbers. The episode covers updates on Flick products, parenting tech from CES, lifehive's beekeeping innovation, and the importance of accessibility in content creation.
Automatic Shownotes
Chapters
0:00
NC_2025_02_09
0:37
Update on Flic from Christian Lynbech
4:20
CES 2025: Elvie Rise Bouncer that Transforms into a Bassinet
9:55
CES 2025: Lifehive Chamber and Frames that Kill Bee Parasites
13:17
Fancy Transcripts of Video Interviews
32:00
CES 2025: Roam SodaTop for Making Sparkling Water on The Go
35:37
CES 2025: StethoMe Electronic Stethoscope for Home Use
39:48
Support the Show
40:27
CCATP #808 ā Jason Snell on The Magic Behind the Six Colors Charts
Long Summary
This episode features an exciting lineup, including insights from Jason Snell, founder of Six Colors, who shares the intricacies behind his well-known charts from Apple's earnings reports. Our discussion dives deep into how he combines data visualization with aesthetic sensibility to represent Apple's financial health effectively. Jason elaborates on his processes, the history of his charting methods, and the evolution of his approach over time. We cover how he uses Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet application, to create visually appealing yet informative charts, employing the colors of the classic Apple rainbow to categorize different product lines.
We also explore how Jason collects the necessary data for his reports, including the challenges he faces when manually inputting information and ensuring accuracy. He provides a fascinating glimpse into the scripting and automation techniques he employs to streamline the process of generating numerous charts while maintaining the quality and clarity of information presented.
In addition to the interview with Jason, I share updates regarding the Flick button products, following an insightful email from a user providing detailed clarifications. We discuss the differences between various Flick hubs, their integrative capabilities, and potential custom uses, enhancing the understanding of these innovative smart home devices.
The episode also features interviews conducted at CES, broadening our discussion to include revolutionary products aimed at parenting, such as a smart bouncer designed to help infants transition from bouncing to napping seamlessly. We highlight how this design considers the challenges that parents face, aiming to ease their burden during those demanding early days.
Next, we shift gears to lifehiveās innovative beekeeping technology that combats the alarming parasite threat to beehives using heat, showcasing a smart solution that draws on natural bee behavior to maintain hive health without chemical interventions.
As our conversation continues, I delve into personal stories of accessibility, illustrating the implications of my content creation process for individuals with hearing impairments. I discuss the transition to providing transcripts and closed captions to ensure that everyone can engage with my content, regardless of their preferred consumption method.
Throughout these segments, we emphasize shared stories and technologies that bring communities together, whether through intelligent parenting solutions or ways to engage with the latest innovations in tech. This episode is packed with valuable insights, practical applications, and personal touches from listeners and guests alike.
You'll want to listen in if you're interested in data visualization, innovative parenting solutions, or groundbreaking agricultural technology, as there is something here for every tech enthusiast.
We also explore how Jason collects the necessary data for his reports, including the challenges he faces when manually inputting information and ensuring accuracy. He provides a fascinating glimpse into the scripting and automation techniques he employs to streamline the process of generating numerous charts while maintaining the quality and clarity of information presented.
In addition to the interview with Jason, I share updates regarding the Flick button products, following an insightful email from a user providing detailed clarifications. We discuss the differences between various Flick hubs, their integrative capabilities, and potential custom uses, enhancing the understanding of these innovative smart home devices.
The episode also features interviews conducted at CES, broadening our discussion to include revolutionary products aimed at parenting, such as a smart bouncer designed to help infants transition from bouncing to napping seamlessly. We highlight how this design considers the challenges that parents face, aiming to ease their burden during those demanding early days.
Next, we shift gears to lifehiveās innovative beekeeping technology that combats the alarming parasite threat to beehives using heat, showcasing a smart solution that draws on natural bee behavior to maintain hive health without chemical interventions.
As our conversation continues, I delve into personal stories of accessibility, illustrating the implications of my content creation process for individuals with hearing impairments. I discuss the transition to providing transcripts and closed captions to ensure that everyone can engage with my content, regardless of their preferred consumption method.
Throughout these segments, we emphasize shared stories and technologies that bring communities together, whether through intelligent parenting solutions or ways to engage with the latest innovations in tech. This episode is packed with valuable insights, practical applications, and personal touches from listeners and guests alike.
You'll want to listen in if you're interested in data visualization, innovative parenting solutions, or groundbreaking agricultural technology, as there is something here for every tech enthusiast.
Brief Summary
In this episode, I speak with Jason Snell, founder of Six Colors, who reveals the art of creating visually striking charts from Apple's earnings reports using Numbers. We discuss his data collection challenges and automation techniques for maintaining accuracy and clarity.
Additionally, I provide updates on Flick button products, explore innovative parenting tech from CES, and highlight lifehiveās beekeeping technology that safeguards hives without chemicals. I also address accessibility in content creation, emphasizing the importance of transcripts and closed captions. This episode offers valuable insights for fans of technology and innovation.
Additionally, I provide updates on Flick button products, explore innovative parenting tech from CES, and highlight lifehiveās beekeeping technology that safeguards hives without chemicals. I also address accessibility in content creation, emphasizing the importance of transcripts and closed captions. This episode offers valuable insights for fans of technology and innovation.
Tags
Jason Snell
Six Colors
charts
Apple's earnings reports
Numbers
data collection
automation techniques
parenting tech
lifehive
accessibility
transcripts
closed captions
technology
innovation
Transcript
[0:00]
NC_2025_02_09
[0:00]Hi, this is Alison Sheridan of the No Silicast podcast, hosted at podfeet.com, a technology podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, February 9th, 2025, and this is show number 1031. I'm super excited about this week's show, not only because we have four really interesting interviews from CES, and we have an article about how I'm now providing transcripts for these interviews, but also because we have Jason Snell on the show, where he's going to explain how he makes his famous six colors charts, the ones he does for the Apple's earnings reports. It is geeky good fun. So let's kick right in.
[0:37]
Update on Flic from Christian Lynbech
[0:38]A month after I did the article all about the Flick button, the Hub LR, and the Flick twist, I got an email from Christian Lindbeck. And I'm going to read that to you because it's really, really interesting. He's got a whole bunch more info about the Flick products that I did not know. He addresses several things I talked about, and he brings some good clarifications, so I am going to read you his email verbatim.
[1:02]Eternally behind on my podcast listening, I have just listened to your review of the Flick devices. As a happy user of these myself, I would like to add a few comments, knowing that some of this may have already been discussed at a later point. First of all, the Mini Hub is significantly cheaper than the LR Hub. That's something I said in the show. He said it's actually one-third of the price. However, the Mini does not support HomeKit, or at least not out of the gate. The Add to HomeKit toggle that appears in the setup screen when configuring a button in the LR hub does not appear when the button has been to the Mini hub. It does, however, say that the Mini hub supports Matter, so in principle one should be able to make it appear in HomeKit, but I've not yet found a way to make that happen. I will try to write two Flix support about it, as I have happily bought the three minis before I realized this issue. He included a link to flick.io slash flick-hubs where you can kind of see the feature chart of the two different hubs and compare and contrast them. Now let's get back to his email. As you mentioned, there's also a Mac version of the Flick app, allowing one to add buttons to a Mac. The Mac app also supports custom integrations, which means it is possible to make a button execute a script, which again means that one can do pretty much anything the Mac can do already. I have, for instance, a button to set a focus mode using this feature.
[2:25]Allison interjecting here again, this is very interesting because I've got some ideas of what I want to do with the flick button and I didn't realize I could do a script directly into the flick, so this is good.
[2:36]Back to Christian again. The IR capability of the LR Hub allows you to attach an IR blaster, which means that you can control a device that is controllable via IR, say a TV or a receiver. I have an LR Hub, but I've never looked at this. I think that the blaster needs to be bought separately.
[2:54]Now, maybe you remember, but I complained that there was no way to tell the different flick buttons apart. I used little cutout pieces of post-it notes to tell them apart. Christian addresses this too. He says, Flick sells various sticker packs, both with pictograms and blank stickers, such that one can use them to tell the different buttons apart. The button also remembers its name, so one can check with the appropriate Flick app if they've been mixed up. He also writes that he was very excited when the twist came out. He said he thinks he backed it on Kickstarter, and he has one that admittedly he has yet to find a use for, as he doesn't have any smart lights. Note that also the Flick Twist is not HomeKit compatible, but is thread compliant. He says, feel free to let me know if you have further questions on these nifty gadgets. After reading Christian's great email, I found the accessories page on flick.io, link in the show notes, and they have so many fun options for stickers. They have white ones and black ones and transparent ones and gold and the dark ones. They also sell adhesive pads and a metal clip to hold a flick button on your keychain if you like. They even have a wrist strap to make a flick button into kind of a watch-looking device. And that sounded kind of silly at first, but imagine how useful it could be if you were disabled in some way or maybe bedridden with an illness. You could run automations right from your wrist. I think that would be awesome. Thank you so much, Christian, for adding all this great info of our understanding of flick products.
[4:20]
CES 2025: Elvie Rise Bouncer that Transforms into a Bassinet
[4:23]I have five grandchildren, so I had to stop immediately when I saw something to do with babies here. I'm in the LV booth with Alex Knox. Tell us about this. Well, LV is a company that designs products really thinking about mums very much as a starting point. So we started about 10 years ago, and we developed a wearable breast pump at a time where breast pumps were kind of connected up to with cables and tubes and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember those. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So kind of really revolutionized that. And then this is another product that's really thinking about mums and the challenges they have um with getting so exhausted so when we were kind of designing it we spoke to loads of mums and this sort of burnout was a real issue that was absolutely completely common like 93 percent of, young mums suffer from burnout. And old mums, probably. And old mums, all mums. So we were thinking, well, how can we do something about that? And doing something to help with baby sleep is a way of giving mums a little bit more time to look after themselves, gives them some rest. So we've developed this lovely bouncer, and it's quite smart because baby can kind of bounce it, and you can use it manually, or you can program it to do the bounce that you want. Just set the bounce you want like that. And it just keeps doing it. So you hit a setting and then you bounced it the way you wanted it and then it's repeating that. And it's connected so I've got a little app that I can load up on my phone.
[5:49]So the bouncer, let's describe this, it's got four wooden legs that come out across the bottom and then it's kind of a little bassinet thing. A little bassinet, Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a sort of, in this mode, it's a baby bouncer. But the clever bit with it is, because a lot of what mums find is that their baby, they can see the baby's starting to get a little bit sleepy. It needs to have a nap. They think, I can't leave it in the bouncer because I need to put it somewhere sleep safe. But they're kind of worried that they have to go and disturb the baby to move it to the bassinet. So we designed a bouncer that will transform from bouncer into a bassinet. Right, I'm going to need to see that happen. So is the bouncing, Oh, no, he stopped the bouncing.
[6:27]And then I just pull this button, the latch underneath here, and it automatically detaches the harness, which gets pulled away. This is turned into a full bassinet with padded sides? Yeah, well, no, it's got a padded sheet underneath, but that's also breathable. They're breathable sides. So it complies with all the American Academy of Pediatrics. They get a lot of recommendations about what a bassinet should be and all the ASTM standards. So it complies all the standards about being a bassinet and all the standards that are to do with it being a bouncer as well. So this means that moms don't need to go through that dilemma about, am I going to wake my baby up again? So it just gives them a little bit of extra time. You need to do that. Yeah, so the main thing that's different about this, the biggest feature, is this ability to do a bounce that is the bounce you would do for the baby.
[7:20]I think the transformation is the thing that when we've done lots of testing, we speak to loads of mums as part of our development process, and that's the bit they go, wow, that kind of transfer baby problem is the thing that they all kind of recognize. Okay, and you could go the other way too. It also, it's got like a sensor in it now, so it automatically will start recording that your baby is now having a nap. So a lot of mums want to record the information about how much their baby is eating, what their baby's sleep habits are like, because then they can start to see patterns. So on the app, as well as controlling the bounce, it also does like a record of all the sleep.
[7:59]That the baby has had over time. Here is the baby has. So it's just opening up now. Now this is quite a challenging network environment. It is. It's always hard here. So they just put a few in here. So every time the baby's in, it'll show, yeah, that's now kind of having a nap. Now the baby's in. Do you know the baby was asleep? Well, you can go in. And it starts off just like the best baby's there. And then you have to click on it and you can maybe say convert that to sleep. So you can adjust it if the baby only slept for 20 minutes. It's not actually doing sleep monitoring, though. It's just sensing its occupancy detecting at the moment. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's great. But it does allow you then to, if you look at it over time, you can start to build up the sort of patterns and stuff. So you can see this is when the baby's likely to want to take a nap and stuff like that. So you get a bit more kind of understanding of how the sleep is developing in the baby because it constantly changes This doesn't have a little little ones as you know, that's for sure So the product is called the LV and is it is that what it's called um rise LV rise? And it's going to be Launching very soon while launching here. It's going to be for sale very soon And you have a price point on the LV rise. Yes, seven nine nine. All right, very good And where would people go to find LV rise?
[9:13]The PR person's going to answer the question. Where do we go to get LVRise? Oh, well, you can go to the LV site, and we'll also have some other distributors. But check out the LV website. Spell it for us. Let me get you that. Yeah, it's E-L-V-I-E. LVRise. LVRise at LVRise.com? Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, LVRise.com. No, it's just LVRise.com, isn't it, here in the U.S.? Okay. Sorry, I've come over to the U.K. Got a long road to go. Okay, LV.com. Very good. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. Very nice to speak to you. All right, well, that was fun, but now let's take a sharp turn from baby stuff to beehives.
[9:55]
CES 2025: Lifehive Chamber and Frames that Kill Bee Parasites
[10:00]When you're walking down the aisle and you see somebody wearing a beekeeper suit, you know you've got to stop and find out what they're doing. I'm here with Pascal Bruner from Lifehive. Yes, hello. We have developed a solution for beekeepers, and we help them to control a parasite called varroa mite, which is the most deadly parasite. And we do this by applying heat instead of chemicals.
[10:22]Okay, I don't know anything about beekeeping. You have something that looks kind of a honeycomb, and it's in a wood case, and I know nothing else. Yeah, exactly. So, inside of this frame, we have a heating element embedded right in the foundation. And we heat up for three hours to 42 degrees centigrade, which is 108 degrees Fahrenheit. And this is like an in-floor heating for the bee brood, which kills the mites while the bees survive. So, is this fake honeycomb and you don't put honeycomb in here? No, no. You put this one into your hives. This is how beekeepers work.
[10:55]Okay, so yeah, like I said, I know nothing about beekeeping. I've seen people pull hives out and rescue the bees, that kind of a thing, but I haven't seen... Do the bees build wax on top of that? Yes, the bees build wax on that. Yeah, exactly. The bees, they build up their cells right on top of here, and then they breed their baby bees in those cells. So this is how beekeeping is done at the moment, industrially as well. Oh, I see. So why is it not naturally that they live in heated environments? You would think that if heat helps kill those parasites, it has no other side effects to the bees? No, there are no side effects. I mean, the bees, they control the hive climate very strictly. So normally it's always like at 35 to 35.5 degrees. So they keep it very narrow and they regulate it. So if it's too cold, they warm it up. If it's too hot, they start ventilating. The beekeepers do. No, the bees. The bees themselves. The bees themselves. They control the temperature. Yeah, exactly. Wow.
[11:57]With our treatments we do a short-term treatment to 42 degrees centigrade just on that frame which helps killing this parasite while keeping the bees alive wow and they're okay with that little bit hotter temperature yeah they are absolutely fine with that that's fascinating so who do you how do you sell this product uh we're selling this to beekeepers and we're launching on kickstarter by the end of february 25. Very good and if people want to learn more about Lifehive, where would they go? To lifehive.io. Lifehive.io. And do you know, Steve wants to know how this is powered. It's all solar powered, so we have a battery and the solar panel per hive so that it can work on remote areas or somewhere out in the fields where you don't have grid access. Very good, this is really cool. I don't know anything about what this should cost, but do you have an idea of a price point? Yeah, MSRP will be $799, and with the Kickstarter campaign, you can get it at 30% discounted at $549. So do you buy a Hive, or not just this one piece? The full Hive, including solar and battery, is all together, it's all as one kit. Oh, that's way better than just this one piece, then. Now I get it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got it. All right, thank you very much. This was really interesting. Thank you, Pat. All right, thank you. Likewise.
[13:17]
Fancy Transcripts of Video Interviews
[13:21]Well, I know I'm a weirdo with a podcast and blog post for everything that's in the show. I've told the story many times how someone told me I shouldn't do that because maybe people would read instead of listen. I remember putting a horrified look on my face and saying, oh gosh, you're right, it would be terrible if they got the content the way they wanted. Anyway, I've also told the story of the gentleman who wrote to me ages ago to tell me that he's deafblind and that he reads my content using his braille display. He wasn't interested in any more interaction than that, though I would have loved to talk to him more and learn about his life, but he just wanted me to know he was out there. I declared on the show that I would always keep blogging the podcast content, if only for him. When we got back from CES, I talked about how great it is that for the first few months of the year, I don't have to work very hard to get the podcast out because we have so many wonderful interviews to play. Steve does most of the work publishing the videos to YouTube, embedding them on podfeet.com, and exporting the audio files for the podcast.
[14:18]But I got to thinking, if I'm not writing very many blog posts because of all the interviews, then the people who prefer to read are being left out in the cold. Steve does put a lot of context before the embedded video, so that's great, but what if you can't hear the video or the audio of the interview? You could wait until the podcast gets delivered on Sunday night, when a full transcript of the show is available, but why should you have to wait? What if you're like my buddy Neeraj, who's hearing impaired, and he likes reading my blog posts? Or what about the deafblind guy?
[14:48]I decided to create a curated, edited transcript of the conversations, and then Steve can include them in the blog post below the video. I started with MacWhisper by the lovely Jordy Bruin. Once I got a good process going with MacWhisper to make the transcripts, I realized it could also make really good closed captions for the video as well. I'll get into the details of how all this works, but let's just back up a little bit first. Steve imports the raw audio file into Final Cut, and then he tops and tails it with the intro and outro graphics and music. Then he adds a lower third to show the name and title of the person I'm interviewing. He exports the audio as an uncompressed AIFF, and he saves it to my desktop so I can play it for the no-silicast. That part doesn't have the top and tail music. While the intro music for every video is the same, the time I actually start talking after the video starts varies slightly. When he saves the audio file to my desktop, he adds to the name the time offset from the beginning of the video till I start to talk. For example, the name would be appended with 12-600, which tells me that the offset is 12.600 seconds in the video version.
[15:57]MacWhisper, amongst its many talents, can create subtitles to be embedded into the videos on YouTube. I know YouTube can automatically do that, but we wanted control of the process to make them just as good as they could possibly be. After it has transcribed the audio, MacWhisperer that is, I select the segments option. You know how when you have subtitles on, you see a short set of words, and they stay on screen for a few seconds, and then you see another bit of text? They're not really sentences, those are just called segments. MacWhisperer breaks the text into these logical segments and notes the time they should be on screen, the start and stop time. Since a video won't start playing the audio for 12 or more seconds, I need to tell MacWhisperer to offset the segment timing by that amount. That's why I need to know that a particular video starts at 12 seconds and 600 milliseconds from the beginning. Now, if it had been up to me, I'd have started every single closed caption around, I don't know, 12 and a half seconds. But Steve insisted the closed captions had to be precisely in sync. So he measures, he moves the slider, he gets it down to the exact millisecond that I start talking, and he puts that in the file name. After entering the offset MacWhisper, I simply export the segment as an SRT file, and I put it back on his desktop. By the way, since I wrote this up originally, Steve said, can't I just do this? So we put MacWhisper on his Mac desktop, and now he creates the SRT files himself.
[17:23]Armed with the captions, he can now upload the video and the SRT files to YouTube, write up the video description while I go work on the transcript, for the people who want to read instead of listen. Creating the SRT file for a three to seven minute video takes a minute or two for Mac Whisper to first do the transcription and then just seconds for me or Steve to put in the offset and export to SRT. Easy peasy, as Neeraj always says. While generating the closed captions is a cakewalk, the transcripts are quite a bit more work. We don't want segments like we do for the video. We want full paragraphs whenever each person is talking. When I switch to the transcript section in MacWhisper, there's an option to combine segments into sentences with the click of a button. I still need to combine the sentences into paragraphs, but before that, I have to have names for each sentence, who's talking. If you have a stereo file that you can separate into two separate monofiles, you can upload them to MacWhisper using their beta podcast feature, and MacWhisper will attempt to automatically separate the transcript by voice and assign names to who's talking. Unfortunately, in 4C, yes, we only recorded mono, so that's not possible. It also is a beta feature, like I said, and I did do some tests, and it kind of scrambled the words, like it would have one person talking before they actually spoke. So it's not quite ready for primetime.
[18:46]Alright, back in the MacWhisperer interface, you can add speaker names and it saves them for future use. I select my name and then I type in the main name of the person I interviewed. I double check the transcript to ensure the person's name is spelled correctly as I introduce them and then I do a search change all if not. At this point, I can hover over a sentence and I can type one or two depending on who's talking. This puts in color the person's name to the left of the sentence and offsets it visually so it's very easy to tell where I need to keep working and where I have assigned a name. Now if I'm just reading the text, this hover and then typing a number works quite well to assign the names. If I'm unsure who's talking, I can select where I'm working and then hit the play button at the bottom of the window or just double click where in the text. If I just let it play while I assign the names, simply hovering over a segment doesn't always seem to select it. I find myself clicking to try to get to the right sentence and one click in the wrong area will flip me into edit mode, so I end up typing a 2 in the middle of someone's sentence. If I click to the far left of the sentence, then that reliably lets me assign the name, but that's a tricky area to precisely click. I find myself stopping and starting the audio in order to get the names assigned reliably, so it was a bit tedious. Once the speakers have been identified, I need to shift select sequential sentences by the same person, then right-click in the area and select Merge from the drop-down menu. Jordi has promised me a keystroke for merge, but it's not just there just yet.
[20:13]Once I've manually named the segments and merged them into paragraphs, I can go back to export. I select markdown as a format, toggle off timestamps, and toggle on show speaker names. I ship the resulting markdown file to Steve, and he completes the blog post with the transcript.
[20:29]Now, the process of combining sentences and assigning speakers doesn't take that long, But it's tedious and it's really uninteresting to me to do such repetitive work. After doing maybe a dozen or so of these Markdown transcripts, I had an idea. I wondered if the paid-for version of ChatGPT, I think they call it ChatGPT+, I wonder if that could create the transcript automatically for me. I pay for it, so I thought I'd give it a shot. My first prompt was, Can you transcribe audio files and assign names to the different voices if I tell you the names? It lied to me and said, Yes, you can upload your audio file and I can transcribe it for you. If you provide the names of the speakers and some guidance on how to differentiate their voices, such as pitch, accent, speech patterns, I can label the transcript accordingly. Well, I say it lied because after I gave it the audio file, it responded with, it looks like I can't run Whisper directly in this environment because Whisper.ai is what actually does transcription.
[21:26]So it went on to say, however, you can transcribe the audio using Mac Whisper, which you already have installed, or another tool like Olama or OpenAI's Whisper on your Mac. Once you have the raw transcription, you can upload the text here and I'll format it with speaker names in bold and structured in Markdown as you requested. Well, other than misleading me, I was curious. How did it know I had Mac Whisper installed? I asked it, how do you know that? My creepy feeling was completely calmed by its answer. It wrote back, I remember because you told me in past conversations. By the way, put all that in bold, like you told me. It said, I don't have access to your Mac or any way to see what apps you have installed. But when you mention tools like Mac Whisper or TextExpander, I take notes so I can provide more relevant help in the future. I searched through my chat GPT conversations, and sure enough, I had asked it to help me embed some complex script it wrote for me as TextExpander snippets, and I'd asked it for help finding undocumented features in Mac Whisper. Rather than creepy, I now think it's pretty nifty. All right, back to the problem to be solved. After ChatGPT told me it couldn't do the transcription, we had some dialogue about how to proceed. At one point, it suggested I do manual assignment of the names and merging of text in MacWhisper. Well, so if I had to do that, what do I need you for exactly? I say we had dialogue because I badgered it into a better plan.
[22:53]ChatGPT eventually suggested a compromise where I have MacWhisper do the initial transcription of the audio, export a text file, and it would take it from there. It wrote, just upload the raw text file from MacWhisper. I'll analyze patterns in the speech to detect when the speaker changes. I'll do my best to segment it properly based on sentence structure, pacing, and context. On its first attempt, it correctly assigned the names to the two different voices by sentence. I think that's extraordinary. Realize, it never heard the voices. It did forget to combine the census paragraphs as I'd requested, but when reminded, it did an admirable job. Now, I had already run this particular interview through my manual process in MacWhisperer, so I compared the results of the name assignments, and they were identical. Truly extraordinary that it can do this only using structure, pacing, and context.
[23:46]Well, I had come up with the correct method, but it was after a lot of back and forth with ChatGPT, so I asked it to write me a single consolidated prompt that included everything we decided on to come up with the results. The resulting prompt was this. I am supposed to write to it. I will provide a transcript exported from MacWhisperer in a plain text file with timestamps. Format the transcript in Markdown. The first voice is a woman named Allison, and the second voice is a man named Francie Zydar. Detect speaker changes based on context and format the text so that each change in speaker is a separate paragraph preceded by the speaker's name in bold. Save the final result as a .md file for download. Now, of course, it wrote this because the person I had just had it do the transcript with was Francie Zydar.
[24:34]Now, it gave me the prompt as a markdown file, and then it suggested I create a TextExpander snippet for it. This was a great idea. Now, it won't always be a man, and they're very unlikely to be named Francie Zydar, but I can fix that in TextExpander. I copied the prompt into text expander, made a drop down to change gender, and I added a text input field for the second speaker's name instead of using Francie's name. The original prompt had a lot of leftover asterisks where I think I was trying to designate bold and italics. I wasn't really sure whether it needed that because it was doing things like made bold separate paragraph. Maybe that's because I was yelling at it to don't forget to make the separate paragraphs. So I left those all in there just in case that meant something to ChatGPT.
[25:17]Now, my initial test of this idea was the interview with Francie about Petal, and while he had a cool accent, it was pretty close to American English. I decided to try my shiny new TextExpander snippet prompt for ChatGPT on a more challenging interview, which you will hear later today. It was with Pavel Elbenowski about StethoMe. He's an awesome Polish accent, so this would be kind of challenging, right? Would you believe it separated our voices perfectly from the text-only transcript?
[25:46]ChatGPT took one minute and 45 seconds to add the names after I gave it the text transcript from MacWhisper. This work would have been at least 15 minutes to do by hand over MacWhisper, even for a short three-and-a-half-minute interview. I did listen using the player from MacWhisper while I was checking the transcript, but it made no errors in assigning names. In this particular interview, Pavel often started and stopped his sentences, repeating a little bit of it, and I noticed that MacWhisper removed all of the duplications and created clear sentences that conveyed what he meant to say. It also took out all of my ums and uhs and made me sound much better in text than I was in the audio. I tried the text expander snippet again in ChatGPT for the interview with Tucker Jones from Rome, and it made one mistake swapping in his name where it should have been mine. It's not flawless, but a lot less work and a lot less tedious work than assigning the names by hand in MacWhisper.
[26:42]The bottom line is that while it's a bit of work to create these transcripts, I had a lot of fun learning the tools to do it. I especially enjoyed learning how to automate even more of the process. MacWhisper is really great at doing the initial transcription, and it does it all locally on my machine, so it's not burning half a coal mine every time I run it. Jordi and Ian on support are very responsive to my many, many questions over the last week or two, and that's awesome. Like I said, I had a lot of questions. After I'd put the transcripts on a few of the videos I asked my hearing impaired buddy Neeraj what he thought He told me I could quote his response He said, oh for sure The transcripts of the interviews are absolute gold.
[27:22]But wait, this just in! I discovered days after the information I gave you that I can automatically create the transcripts with speaker names all within MacWhisper itself. Let me explain how I discovered this. I have MacWhisper on both my MacBook Air and my MacBook Pro, and the app was acting very differently on the two machines, and the interface looked different. On my MacBook Air, after I dragged in an audio file, it would create and display the transcription just as I've described. From there, I could massage it in all these different ways. But on my MacBook Pro, I saw a very different interface, one with colorful buttons saying things like, summarize and separate speakers. I confirmed that I was running the same version on both Macs. On the MacBook Pro, I thought, hey, that button to separate speakers sounded nifty, so I pushed it. I was very surprised to be confronted by a message telling me, I don't have access to the GPT-4.0 model. The full message said, quote, Quote, you do not have access to model GPT-4O. To access GPT-4 models, your account needs to have a valid payment method linked, and you need to use at least $1 with GPT-4O Mini. Check this page for more information, and it gave me a URL.
[28:35]This was very confusing to me because in MacWhisperer's settings, you can put in your API key for ChatGPT+, which I'd already done. I pay $20 a month for ChatGPT+, as I said, so I know I've met the money requirement too. I wrote to Jordy and he explained the problem. He said, to use the ChatGPT features, you will need to add your own OpenAI API key. That API key also needs to have a valid payment method linked to it. Note that this is not the same as ChatGPT+, the subscription. It's confusing, I know, and I've written OpenAI before about this. Well, that's a horse of a different color, isn't it? I ended up having to ask ChatGPT, how do I attach a credit card to my API key? And when I found the answer from ChatGPT, I authorized it for $5, which was the minimum. I unchecked the recurring expense part because I had no idea how much this was going to cost. I did not want to give OpenAI a blank check.
[29:34]Back in MacWhisper, I dragged in an audio file, typed in a prompt telling it the speaker names, and asked that it assign the names in bold and make it in Markdown format. I then pushed the bright green button that said separate speakers, and it worked. Now it didn't look like markdown format, and while manually copy and pasting that didn't work properly, I finally noticed a copy reply button on the right. Pasting from that action did give me the lovely markdown formatting perfectly. Now there's one other significant downside to using ChatGPT from within MacWhisper. Unlike when using the standalone app, ChatGPT inside MacWhisperer doesn't appear to remember anything from prompt to prompt. Sort of like when you go to ChatGPT on your iPhone through Siri, and it goes over and asks a question, and then the next time you ask a question, it doesn't remember. It's just like that. Now, this does force you to get better at writing your initial prompts, that's for sure. You might be asking yourself how much I got soaked by OpenAI on my API key account. After running one prompt that resulted in separated speakers, I raced over to billing on OpenAI, and to my delight, I discovered it cost me a grand total of 8 cents. Well, I played around with it a lot after that, probably running it maybe 20 more times, and I was down 32 cents. I think my time is worth 8 cents.
[30:56]Backing up a little bit, I realized an oversight from my original article. I forgot to test MacWhisper with VoiceOver. I found that it was possible to navigate and select items, and the buttons were labeled properly. However, the interface is unusual enough that without being able to see everything in a window kind of situational awareness, it would be pretty hard to follow what's going on with this app. I think that with maybe 5 to 10 minutes of explanation by a sighted person, my blind friends could get the hang of it. But ideally, they wouldn't need that kind of hand-holding. Let me finally end with a confession. Remember how I said I didn't see these pretty buttons that said things like separate speakers on my MacBook Air? I had to confess to Jordi that I was looking at different tabs on the two computers inside the same application. All right, the hopefully final bottom line is that I'm still getting the hang of using Mac Whisper and all of the cool things it does and trying to understand all of the different pieces of ChatGPT. Like I said, I'm having a lot of fun. I think I have now a pretty streamlined process to bring to Raj his transcripts.
[32:00]
CES 2025: Roam SodaTop for Making Sparkling Water on The Go
[32:04]I'm apparently the last person on earth to get a soda stream. My friend Pat Dangler got me one for Christmas, and I said, I don't need this. We go to the store, and we buy little cans of sparkling water. I don't know what I need this for. And she said, try it. And I said, I don't want to try it. She said, try it. And I tried it, and I think it's the coolest thing on earth. So its whole job is to make soda water without having to go to the store and use up bottles and cans and all that. Is that right, Jason? Or Tucker Jones from Rome. That's right. Yeah. So we've taken kind of the approach of the SodaStream and we've actually shrunken it down into a singular lid that actually works with a reusable water bottle. I'm going to stop you real quick. So people, I might not be the very last person on earth. SodaStream is a standing unit that you put on your counter. It's maybe 18 inches high. You stick a cylinder of, is it CO2? That's right. CO2 in the back, and then you stick a bottle on the front, and it puts all the good bubbles in, and it doesn't have power or anything like that. That's right. But now you've modulized this down to a small unit that just fits on the top of the flask. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so we've taken similar technology and actually turned it all into a singular lid that you can thread onto a reusable water bottle. You take a small cartridge, and then you insert it into this water bottle, and then you would thread this lid on and then you make sparkling water. And this allows you to make sparkling water wherever you are.
[33:31]Not just limited to your home. And then if you are at home, you also now just have a very small device that fits in your drawer, not taking up any space on your countertop. That's the thing. I was like, I don't have room for another appliance. I don't need that. Of course, I made room after I tried it. But yeah, so this is, I forget the name of the big flask because that's a certain size opening, right? Yeah. So this is actually a common threaded opening. So a lot of different brands have the same threads up there. We've actually made a way that you can take a different product that we make, the carbonator connector, and then thread it onto any of most of your favorite water bottle brands. And then that allows you to actually use this in a SodaStream itself as well. Oh, I see. So straight into that. So this new little one is called? The Rome Soda Top. Rome Soda Top. And is that in the market yet? Not yet. Q1 of this year. And do we have a price point yet? For the bottle and the lid, it'll be retailing for around $50.
[34:36]Well, I was expecting a bigger number than that. Now I've got to stock up on those little canisters. That looks like the ones that go into my, we have a whipped cream maker or something like that. I forget what it is. Yeah, it's a similar technology. So it's a gas cylinder that uses nitrous, but these actually use carbon dioxide. So that's... Don't get them mixed up then. Exactly. That's true. Unless you want to have a fun party time. Potentially. Yes. All right. Very good. And the company's name is? Rome. I did not know that actually. Dan, where would we find this product when it comes out? We'll be selling direct-to-consumer on Amazon and then eventually in retail. And the website?
[35:16]Romewater.com. Romewater.com. You heard it here. Thank you. Thank you. Before I start the next interview, I, at the very beginning of this, call the product Stethome because of how it's spelled, but it's actually Stethome. He corrects me, but he doesn't say it very snottily, but I wanted to confess up front. that I said it wrong.
[35:37]
CES 2025: StethoMe Electronic Stethoscope for Home Use
[35:41]When you're walking down the aisles at CES and you see a baby wearing a stethoscope, you simply have to stop. I'm here with PaweÅ Obunowski from StethHome. What is it you're showing us here today? StethHome is an electronic stethoscope for home use. So we are, with this solution, able to check being at home the first symptoms of the lung problems. You just have to put stethome on your chest while it's connected to the mobile application and you are getting instant information whether there is a problem in your lungs or not. Let me describe what he's got on his hands, because we do audio-only podcast as well as the video. So it's a disc, it's maybe an inch tall, and it's a disc that he's just holding up against his chest and it's got a little display, and that's going to be listening to your lungs. Yes, this is a set of microphones which allows you to record good quality audio for the further analysis in our AI algorithms in the cloud.
[36:31]So, this connects to your phone, but then it's going to connect up to the internet and analyze what it's hearing? Is this a medical device? It is a medical device, Class 2A, certified in European Union, not yet in the US. In 2025, we will be able to sell it in the US. So, that seems like a lot of information has to go into that. I mean, normally you have to have a doctor to do this. Yes, but our solution was designed and produced especially for those who often go to a doctor's office. And with our solution, they can stay at home and check it regularly without each time connecting to a doctor's office. But if there is a problem, they can share the link with the report to a doctor's and do the full remote consultation and full remote diagnosis of the lung problem. So if you've got asthma, for example, and things are getting bad, you'd be able to record that essentially and get it to your doctor? Yes, the biggest value we are giving for the asthma patient, for the chronic disease management, because they need it on an everyday basis. And this solution supports such problems. That's fascinating. So is there anything else you need to show us? Do you want to show us anything on the app?
[37:40]No, in the application, you are just connected to the device and record the data. And full analysis is going in the cloud. And the report contains information about what type of abnormalities were detected. So here we have the summary of the information, the red light. So there is a problem detected, but here we can see the full analysis of each point. So we are calculating and showing on a continuous scale the pathology problem of wheezes, ronchi, cross-truckles, fine-truckles to let you and the doctor compare during the time the problem in your lungs. And doctors can listen to those sounds remotely like they used to do it on the regular basis, on the regular visit, and our system annotates with the precision of 10 milliseconds in each pathology during the auscultation recording. Wow, so for those who can't see it, we just watched a display that's essentially like a frequency diagram, kind of. And over time and it's showing little red spots and little peaks and it's got scales for wheezes, rocky, coarse crackles, fine crackles and he's able to play that back. So that is really interesting. So that sounds a characteristic, as I mentioned, asthma, pneumonia, laryngitis, bronchitis, COPD, COVID. So all diseases, those chronic ones and those not chronic diseases connected to the lungs problem. That's why this solution helps both families, especially families with kids without chronic diseases, but also patients with chronic diseases like asthma or COPD.
[39:07]Wow, that is fascinating. So the company is Stethome? Yes, and the product is also Stethome because we are a company of one product. Oh, there you go. And would they find it at stethome.com? Dot com. Very good. And so especially already in the European Union? We are selling it in the European Union, in France, in the UK and Poland. And how much does it cost?
[39:27]149 euro. Really? Holy cow. Is there a subscription service? It's a one-time fee for the device, and additional to this is a yearly subscription of 49 euro. That's not bad for your health, to not go to the doctor, be able to send it in, get a prescription update maybe. That sounds really good. Well, thank you very much, Babel. This is very, very interesting. Thank you very much.
[39:48]
Support the Show
[39:51]Well, there's a lot of ways to help the show, not the least of which is sending in content like the awesome update Christian gave us on Flick. But if you don't have time to do all that work, I get that. Instead, you can be like George from Tulsa and go to podfee.com slash PayPal and donate from there to help the show. Whenever he's feeling whimsy, he even includes little poems in his PayPal messages. This latest one said, Roses are red, violets are blue, this little poem is just for you. Now, poems aren't required, but they are a nice touch. I hope you'll be cool like George and Christian and find ways to support the show.
[40:27]
CCATP #808 ā Jason Snell on The Magic Behind the Six Colors Charts
[40:27]Music.
[40:34]Well, I couldn't be more excited to welcome our guest this week. It is Jason Snell of Six Colors. Welcome to the show, Jason. It's good to be here. Finally, I'm on a podcast. Hooray. No one ever asks, right? Well, if you've been on the internet before and you've heard of a little fruit company called Apple, then you've probably seen Jason's famous Six Colors charts on Apple's earnings calls. I asked Jason to come on today not to talk about Apple's Q1 quarterly results, but rather how he creates these charts because, you know, I'm a data nerd. I'm into it. How's that sound, Jason? I love it. Finally, somebody asking the hard-hitting questions about how charts and graphs are made on the internet. Well, you've been doing this for a long time. How long have your world-famous charts been out?
[41:23]Well, okay. So the truth is we were doing, and I was generating or working with people to generate charts about Apple financial results when I was at Macworld. So this has been at least, I would say, 15 years and maybe longer. I don't know that all just sort of like, it's been 10 years since I've been in Macworld. So that all just kind of fades away. I cannot remember, you know, exactly what happened those last few years, but I'd say it's at least 15 years, maybe longer. Um, and I actually inherited an Apple, uh, results spreadsheet that my old boss, Rick LePage used to keep from way back in the like Mac week days. So I, I, cause he had historical data that was very helpful to also have. Um, but obviously when I came over to six colors, which started in September of, uh.
[42:17]I needed to make a new charting template right because i obviously had made uh i made a charting template that was ugly and then my art director rob schultz at macworld made a a different one that was prettier and that i think for all i know they still use it um and uh so then i go on my own and i'm like okay the data is all public data data is not a problem the uh charts should be original and so i built in numbers um a bunch of charts based on the theme of the site which is six colors the apple six color rainbow from back in the day and so i decided i would build them and also color code them using the apple rainbow colors as my cue which is why they are so very rainbow and not sort of what i think all the macworld ones were blue because that was the color of the macro logo, but six colors ones are many colors. So, so a long time. And this particular spreadsheet has certainly been around since, um, 2014. So do you have all the historical data all the way back? I mean, how far back does it go?
[43:24]I have at this point, I have, I have a separate spreadsheet called historical data that has, a lot of it is annual, not quarterly. And they've changed a bunch of stuff, including their accounting. So it's not really useful to compare across all that distance. I'm just looking now. My spreadsheet now goes back to Q1 of 2011. So that's 14 years of quarterly data in my spreadsheet. But you only, you show what, the last five rolling quarters, right? Years.
[44:01]Oh yeah, I show a smaller section of years. How many is that, actually? I think you're right. I think it's five. Yeah, counting. Oh, yeah, because it starts in Q. Right now it shows Q2 2020 to Q1 2025. Yeah. Okay. So that's it. And I just slide that number. Because I could have them all the way back to 2011. And it's like, it's not, I sometimes will cart out the historical data, but mostly I'm trying to sort of say, yeah, what's been happening in the last five years. That's great. That's kind of another, that's a little bit of an artsy fartsy decision, right? Because you could be, well, I have all the data. I've got to show all the data. And then it doesn't look like information anymore. You know, the problem with charts and graphs is that there is an artsy fartsy element to it, as you just said. And there is also a numbers nerd element to it.
[44:58]And they are sometimes in agreement and they are sometimes in deep conflict because let me tell you, when I started doing these charts, I heard from a lot of people who are asking me for, why is it like this? You should do it like this. Some of those people were friendly. Some of those people were not friendly. I do know some people who are very good at and think a lot about charts like Karen Healy, who's a professor at Duke, who's a statistics professor. And he has consulted with me a little bit about some of this. Dr. Drang, who is a pseudonym for a gentleman who is an engineer, did a lot of graphs and charts and still does in retirement.
[45:39]And he and I talked about what my charts would be. And I guess everybody else who complained is more or less tired of it. So they've stopped. But I did have to progress it. And I wanted, yes, I want, look, I want them to impart information that's useful for people. The whole point of doing charts and graphs is to use your visual sense to understand numbers in a way that maybe your brain, some people understand numbers in their brain, and that's great. But a lot of people really want to see like, oh, it went from this size to this size, and it's going up or it's going down, and that's really helpful. So you want it to be, you want to impart that information, and there's two aspects to it. And there's the artsy-fartsy aspect of it, which is I kind of want it to look nice, and I kind of want it to not just be gray and boring and drab. At the same time, though, there is that number nerd part of it, which is I do want the information it's imparting to be accurate and not misunderstood. And so, you know, those are the conflicts that go on when you're building any kind of a chart or graph system. I think that's a perfect lay in for remember when they first allowed us in an Excel to make 3D bar graphs and you basically got no information when you looked at them because it was too distracting to see that other dimension. You can use the artsy fartsy stuff to make it completely unintelligible. Thank you.
[46:52]Yeah, absolutely. Right. Because you can render those bars and then pivot it in 3D space. And now you can no longer tell the relative size of the different bars. Or the one I liked is, and it's too bad because it made some brilliant charts, but they had a way to do these charts where you're like kind of like, they were like lines, but with fill under them. So they're like, you're building little mountains. And you can have a bigger one and a smaller one. So the one behind it, it was very clever looking because you could basically see like, here's a smaller set and here's a bigger one. Your set and they overlap, but it's okay because the one behind it is bigger. Um, and I always laugh because, you know, sometimes you do those graphs and then a quarter comes along or a period comes along and the one in the back goes below and now you can't see it anymore. And I was like, that's why that's not the best graph to do. But you know, it's, it's a, it's a challenge and I'm not trained in any of this. Um, and so I've had to kind of like find my way and, and, and also rely on the advice of friends. Yeah, that's great. Well, they definitely are. I find them really easy to read, easy to see. And before I get too far into this, how do you gather the numbers? I mean, you don't type them out as the CFO talks, right?
[48:07]So at 1.30 p.m. on the designated day, once every three months that they do warn you about about a month in advance, Apple puts out a PDF at a guessable. It's actually a guessable URL, but you just have to sit there and keep hitting reload until it appears or until you get the press release or whatever. There are places on their website where you can find that data. The numbers get posted at 1.30 PM Pacific on that given day. I have written some scripts, some shortcuts that try to pull the numbers out of the pdf but the pdf layout does change over time so i try that and i i need to do it again because it failed this time i try to do this thing where i can right click on the pdf and say put this on the clipboard and it just puts on the clipboard and i paste it into my spreadsheet you know half the time that works the other half of the time i just put the you know i open the pdf in preview on the left side and i have numbers on the right side and i or maybe it's the other way around and I will just input the numbers in. Oh, you look at them. You won't copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste. You can't, I mean...
[49:17]You could, I find it, I find it more because time is of the essence there. So I definitely feel the time pressure. I find it more useful to see both so I can see the number and type it than to move my my, you know, pointer, the cursor back and forth, click, select in a PDF, which is kind of hard to select from and then paste and do that over and over again. I think it's actually easier for me. And I, okay. So think about me. I grew up using computers first, a Commodore PET, and then an Apple II that had you just type in programs in BASIC. And the computer magazines of the era, what they would do is they would just print the code in the magazine, and then you just type it in. And as a result, I learned to type real fast. I learned to touch type in my own special system because I was looking at the code on the page, and I needed to get it right, and I couldn't look at my fingers.
[50:11]And I got really good at typing in stuff like numbers because especially in basic, there are lots of line numbers and there's lots of data statements that would happen at the end of the program where there was just a long string of numbers separated by commas that you'd have to put in. I got really good at that. So for me, I do orient because one of the things that's in their PDF is it's this quarter and the previous, the year ago quarter. And so I can orient a little bit where I can make sure that I'm in the right row by looking back a year at that number. Is that number the number over there? yes it is well then this is the right place to start and then i'll go and i'll put them all down there have i typed something wrong before and had to rebuild my charts yes but usually not and i would love to get a more robust system that could um extract that number i mean if i could automate that process i would i keep trying one day maybe i'll succeed i'm guessing that you're an extended keyboard uh nine nine keypad person for the numbers.
[51:04]No, because I had an Apple II and I never had a number pad, I just used the numbers across the top. And in fact, to this day, as a mechanical keyboard enthusiast, my favorite keyboard style is, I think, is it a 75? It's basically, or a 65, the really small ones with no number pad. I don't like, honestly, ergonomically, as a right-hander, I want my trackpad right next to the keyboard. and the number pad kicks it out. So I don't use the number pad. And yeah, so on the Apple II, and the Commodore pad had a number pad, but the Apple II didn't. And so if I was typing big data statements or whatever, I was doing it one to nine and then zero on the top row of the keyboard. And so that's what I still do. Out of everything you're going to tell me today, I think that's going to be the most impressive thing. My mother was a touch typist and on an IBM Selectric typewriter, the one with the little ball, she could type 96 words a minute. And I asked her once, I said, how did you learn to do the numbers? She goes, oh, I can't do the numbers.
[52:10]Yeah, the numbers are hard. It's true. We had that, my dad's office had an IBM Selectric with a ball. And if you wanted to do italics, you could take the Roman ball off and put the italic ball. Oh, yeah. Then you type italics and then you take it off. She was so excited when that came out because the regular one with the little arms that went up and down, it was too slow for her. She would jam it up. She couldn't type as fast when the Selectric came out. Man, that was downtown. I'm trying to remember. I was watching a TV show. Just saw a Selectric typewriter in the trailer. They were showing one typing. No, it was in Columbo. It was in Columbo. That's what it was. Back a little ways.
[52:48]Yeah. So, anyway, that's why. If you video my hands, you'll see that I am not using any typing system known to humankind. I literally just made it up as I went along, but I typed up like 120, 130 words a minute. Holy cannoli. I taught myself to type when I had the Hong Kong flu and pneumonia at the same time, and I took my mother's 1945 typing book and taught myself to type. So I do it the proper way. Now, how do you feel about the shift lock?
[53:19]Caps lock? Caps lock, yeah, sorry. I use it ironically only, but I do use it. I don't remap it to something. I use it if I want to make a joke or something that's in all caps. It'd be like if you type NASA. I will cap it on. You would use it for NASA? I'll just hold the shift key down for that. Wow. That's not enough. It needs to be like a whole sentence of caps before I will turn the caps lock on. Wow. I'm a big believer in the caps lock and these people that remap the caps key that just, I just think that's, I don't know, that's heresy. I have a big problem with that. But that's okay. There's all kinds in this world. So let's, now you've got the data in. Let's go back to when you first started out on, let's say, I guess start with six colors would be a good place to start. And by the way, congratulations on a decade on your own. That's fantastic. That's really great thank you it's been great know whether it would work and it worked who would have known you and Tom Merritt it all works out so my question is when you first started doing this how did you create the graphs so you've typed in all the numbers now what, Yeah. So I've got the data sheet. So I chose to use Numbers and not Excel. At that time, you could use Excel, you could use Numbers, you could use Google Sheets.
[54:32]And although Excel's charting has actually gotten better in the intervening decade, I still don't think it looks great, but it looks better. Numbers made great charts. I don't love Numbers as a spreadsheet. In fact, I use, I did, I did stop paying for Office 365 last year. And every now and then we hit something where like, oh, my wife would be like, what do I do with this? I'm like, you got to open in pages. Sorry, we don't have a word anymore. And it's a little bit weird, but I just thought, I don't think I need that money. And the really the moment was that for me was that Excel didn't feel like home to me anymore. It used to be that whenever I had a default sort of like anything, I would just do it in Excel with tabular data. and then get it out into BBEdit or whatever, but I'd start in Excel. And I realized that my default is now Google Sheets or sometimes Numbers, and it's never Excel. So I'm not a huge Numbers fan, although I use it some, and I use Google Sheets a lot, but Numbers makes beautiful charts.
[55:32]I mean, that's the bottom line, is that Numbers, for whatever reason, Apple really focused on building flexible, pretty charting. I think part of it is that excel given and this is old computer history again but given excel's legacy as a um you know it came from the mac but it came in a very early era it is a grid that's the whole premise right you open an excel file and it's a grid and you open a numbers file and it's a canvas with a grid on it. That's disturbing. And you could have like multiple grids of data on one tab of a numbers file. It's a very different paradigm. But, and it's weird, it is weird. But one of the things that that means is that it's very easy from the beginning, it was built to be a canvas on which there could be data and on which there could be pretty images from the data. And so I think that that is probably part of the source of numbers being something that was designed to generate nicer charts than Excel would.
[56:42]You know, it's ironic to me that numbers is very good at making pretty charts, but I find numbers very difficult to format that tabular data. I've got a lot of, I was just fighting with it yesterday where I wanted a dark black border around these four cells, these four cells, these four cells. And I couldn't do that in one fell swoop. I had to select four cells, give me the dark border, select these four cells. I couldn't command select either and do that. It would grab the whole thing.
[57:10]I've gotten better with numbers over the years, It is still odd. It's better than it was. Even on the iPad, it's actually pretty good. But it's a little bit odd. And I mean, like I said, so it's odd, but in some cases, it's an advantage that it's odd. And I think the charting. So I took my big grid of Apple data, and then I built a chart and a bar chart, and tried to figure out how far to go back. And I'm sure that I didn't start with five years, but i ended up there um i chose the colors for the product categories based on the colors in the apple rainbow so mac is blue and ipad is yellow uh services is purple mac is i've had or mac is sorry mac is yeah mac is green iphone is blue right um ipad is yellow and uh services is purple and then apple revenue is the color of money and wearables is red so i i just i picked I picked those and wearables used to be other, and I'm not even sure if I used to do charts of it, but I had to at some point add those in. So I think you said they can do one more product category. Yeah. And it would be orange, which is so close to yellow that I'd really rather that they didn't. But if they did, that would be what we would do.
[58:29]But I did choose sort of like a dark green color of money for the overall Apple revenue. And sometimes people ask, why is it green? My answer is money is why. And so I built one and, you know, messed with the fonts. And over the years i mean we redesigned the site a couple years in and used uh a single font everywhere, uh so we decided we would uh we would make that proxima nova we would make i i decided proxima nova would go everywhere since that was the font for the site, um i there was a whole period where people like dr drang wrote to me and said, You know, on seasonal businesses like Apple's, the bars are sometimes detrimental to understanding overall trends because they're seasonal. And what you could do is try to chart a four-quarter rolling average of that, which actually kind of makes sense, right? Because it really is like, how are they doing in the last four quarters? And I tried to build a chart of that, and I didn't really like how that looked. And I eventually settled on what I have now, which is there's a four-quarter rolling average.
[59:38]Line graph overlaid, it's at the same scale, overlaid on the bar graph so that you can see the rolling average as well as the individual thing. So it emerged over time, but it started with one that I would then, when I was sort of happy with it. I copied it, you know, and changed what data it was pointing at. And from that came one, and then eventually, I guess, two primary kinds of charts, because there's also a change chart, because investors especially really care about year-over-year results. And so, I created bar charts that are year-over-year revenue change to go with the gross revenue numbers. Backing up to the one with the line, that was actually going to be one of my questions, was whether I thought that was a trend line and, you know, like a best fit. And the fact that it is a rolling average, that makes a lot more sense. Because it's got little points in it sometimes. And what's funny about it is numbers lets you generate... Yeah, the points usually happen when there's a holiday quarter that's really big and it resets versus the previous holiday quarter that it's a lot more. And so it kind of goes up. But it's a, you know, smoother kind of idea. Yeah.
[1:00:54]Numbers lets you automatically generate a four quarter, like a rolling average chart. But the problem is that its scope is, boy, this is nerdy, but like it will only do the average based on the data that's in the chart that's being charted, which means that it starts four quarters in because it doesn't have a four quarter average until then. So what I have is a calculation set of fields in the data that calculates a four-quarter rolling average, which is why when you see where the four-quarter rolling average starts in Q2 of 2020...
[1:01:32]It's using the four previous quarters, even though you can't see them because the chart's got, I mean, the tabular data, it exists. So I have to do that manually and it's dumb, but that's just how it has evolved. No, that makes sense. So when you're doing this, then I'm trying to picture the spreadsheet itself. Apple or Numbers has these grids, like you call it, on a canvas, and then you can also have separate tabs. Do you have a separate tab of the data for total Apple revenue on one tab and then its chart? And then the next tab over would be total Apple profit in a grid and then its chart? Or is this one massive scrolling canvas? I have a tab with quarterly data going back to 2011 in it, and that's all that's there. It used to also have the charts in it, but at some point I moved the charts into their own tab. Okay, so all the data is in one place, all the columns? All the columns, everything. It's just a huge thing. And then separately, I actually have an annuals tab that has the annual fiscal year total numbers so I can generate some annual year-by-year charts instead. Those are in a different tab. But yeah, so that it's a huge...
[1:02:41]I mean, I can... Let me... I'm going to go over there. I mean, it is... Let's see here. Sorry, I'm making some mistakes. It goes out to column BF. So there's a lot. Only 69 rows. Nice, but way out there BF in terms of. And I'll get BG will be next quarter. Oh, okay. That's going across quarter by quarter. Okay, so all of the criteria, revenue and profit, those kind of things are in the left column. And then the columns out to BF are all of the quarters that you've done.
[1:03:18]Exactly. Okay. All right. And then each tab has its own spreadsheet. Now, is there anything in it that automates when the next quarter comes in? So you've just slapped in, typed in the first quarter 2025 results. Does that automatically change all the charts to now show that sliding one over? Would that it did. I have no idea how I would do that. And so a few days before the results come out, I spend half an hour clicking in each chart and making a new column and then clicking in every single chart and then moving to the other tab and then sliding the header because that will, if you slide the header, all the other selections will slide, which is a weird numbers thing where sometimes if I slide one of the things that I'm charting, the other one doesn't move. And so they get offset so the header row that is there for the labels actually will move all the data to which is just a weird quirk so i will do that every single one of those charts uh it's super repetitive it's really annoying and i have no idea how to automate that so i just that's a manual thing that and i search and replace the date right so it'll say whatever november 30th or I guess October 38, 31st, 2024. And I'll do a search and replace to January 30th, 2025. That's all the prep that I do for that. And I used to have to do more of it. I do have to...
[1:04:45]On the day, I have to make sure that my, because I set the height of the data and the chart manually. And so like, sometimes they have a huge record quarter and I actually have to reset the top because the top needs to be higher than it was before. Yeah. So I have to do those in the moment. And then I have a couple of charts where there are label text labels that are riding along with the data that sometimes if the data changes a lot, I need to move them a little bit to get them to be in the right place that they're readable. I used to actually have to do that with the pie chart, but the pie chart, you can do it automatically, and I do it automatically on the pie chart now. That was something I was going to ask you. If I look at, say, the total Apple revenue, you've chosen to put the value down at the bottom. So it's a straight line across just above where it says Q2, Q3, Q4. It says 58.3, 59.7. You've got them across there. I love the white text on the dark background. Beautiful. Looks great. But on the next one, also great, total Apple profit, you've got the numbers at the peaks of the bar chart. What made you make that decision? I don't think there was a decision there, Allison. I think that literally.
[1:05:54]I just put them there, and it's inconsistent, and I should fix it for next time. Oh, no. Well, which one's right? Because I want it to be consistent, and I also want it to be more readable. And I think you could argue either way. I think having the numbers at the bottom means you can read them across. I think having to read the numbers at the tops of the bars, you have to go kind of up and down and up and down and up and down and it's a little bit annoying but I could see arguments for either one but I have generally settled on having them at the bottom yeah the bottom is pleasing and aesthetically I do like that I can there's no reason read I can just read the peaks though that's kind of that's kind of a neat feature on that particular chart but yes I do expect that to be fixed by the next time I'm on it you're actually making a note on it aren't you i'm i'm doing it right now i want my own version um, So, let's see, you also had to make decisions on where it's white text versus black text, like year-over-year total revenue change. You were starting to talk about that one, and I think that's a really valuable chart because just looking at the revenue numbers, it's just sort of like numbers all over the place, you know, these peaks and valleys and quarter to quarter. But when you look at the revenue change, that has a lot of information because you can see when it's down and when it's up. Yeah.
[1:07:12]Yeah, it's an important thing in financial terms to see the change over time, because you could end up seeing, I know, and then we're talking about derivatives, basically, but it's likeā¦ When you said derivatives, I was so happy. I was listening to you and Dan talking about, when you said derivatives, to explain what a derivative is to people who didn't study calculus. I took a year of college calculus in 1988-89, so I've forgotten it all. But derivatives, the idea there is that you're measuring the change and the change over time. And it is exactly. So, in other words, when financial types will say things like, Apple is, let's say services revenue is slowing.
[1:07:57]What they usually mean is that the rate of growth of services revenue is slowing. And so, if you look at the services chart, the purple chart, it is almost always up. And you would say, wow, that's a great business. It's going great. But if you look at the year-over-year services revenue change, you will see that they used to go up 24, 27, 33, 26% per quarter year-over-year change. And then they went down to 12, 5, 6, 5, 8. So still growing, but the rate of change of the growth is slowing down. The rate of change of growth is slowing down. And that is right. So the growth is still happening. It's just growing slower. And that is, it's very important for Wall Street people. And I think that it frustrates a lot of people who don't think about it that way. But that's basically it. So you can get in, you can make mistakes when you're trying to communicate this stuff where you start talking about down.
[1:08:53]And what you mean is that the growth is down, but the thing is still up. It's just not up by as much as you thought. And sometimes that can get frustrating for people who don't. because what i do in a lot of my coverage is i don't own apple stock it's not i read about apple i can't own my apple stock that's my own policy that was my employer's policy before that i've never owned it might be in a mutual fund or something but you don't buy it might be somewhere but if it is i don't know about it um and so i don't view the world that way i really cover apple to business stuff to think about the shape of apple's business and why they make the decisions they make if you're viewing it from the perspective of an investor you have a completely different view of it and that's fine and i try to explain both to people but that's why a lot of people who are really excited about apple and apple products will see like a record report come out of earnings and the stock will go down and they'll be like why did they do that that's so stupid it's like well i can tell you why it's because in the call and in the in the release they did a they did a projection of what their results are going to be next quarter and it was less than the people who bought the stock thought it would be and so the stock went down a little bit that's it it's just It's a different kind of worldview.
[1:10:01]And the numbers, the revenue chart and the revenue change chart sort of reflect it. Also, I think it can be useful. I mean, right now we're talking a lot about Apple. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has been reporting a lot about Apple trying to push into new areas in the wearables home and accessory space, specifically in smart home and building new home products. And I think one of the ways you can understand why that would be the case is if you look the year-over-year wearables revenue change wearables home and accessories because for years it was.
[1:10:34]For years, it was going double digits up, and then it was going single digits, and then it was all of a sudden, it was actually going down by a little bit. And that's the kind of thing that you look at and say, oh, somebody at Apple is like, why are we not growing in that category anymore? And again, all those numbers that are down, they're still making a huge amount of money, right? It's still a huge amount of their business.
[1:10:59]It's bigger than the Mac or the iPad, in fact. It's almost $12 billion. But it has not grown in two years. And so, if you are thinking about that, that's the thing that is the red alert flashing saying. My guess is when they started hitting those down eight, down one, up two, down three kind of era, they're like, we got to do something here. And just, you know, more AirPods, isn't it? And the Vision Pro is not it. So, you know, maybe the home category is a place we can, we can, and I imagine that is one of the big motivators in them doing that. Now, you switched. In this case, you do the numbers, the percentages at the tops and bottoms. There's no way you could put it just across the axis. This one makes sense. I don't think it would be readable. Yeah. Yeah, so that's the idea there is just I wanted it somewhere so it's outside the bars and the span of the chart leaves enough white space at the top and the bottom so that it can be readable in that scenario. And, you know, this is one of the, it brings up one of the other issues of charting, which is what do you show? Like bad charts don't show all the data at the bottom. And so you end up in a scenario where if you take a chart, like I've got the, let's, let's say, you know, I take any of these. If we take the iPad revenue chart, and instead of having the bottom of the bar be zero, the bottom of the bar is $4.5 billion, then you've got a chart that looks like some quarters Apple didn't sell any iPads, which is not true.
[1:12:29]And it looks like any rate of change suddenly gets magnified where it's like, oh my God, they doubled. And it's like, well, they didn't double. They won up $1 billion, but you didn't see the other $5 billion below the waterline. And so there are a lot of misleading charts you could do that way. So sometimes so like the scale of my charts is not the same. But they all do start at zero. And that's why is because you really just need to see the entire context of that number.
[1:12:54]Similarly, you know, I want to, I want to position the revenue change charts in a way that is understandable. I would love if it would let me sort of like even draw a line at zero, but it mostly you can see that it's zero is where the bars either go up or they go down. And I try to position that where there's enough white space that you can see the words top or bottom. And you can see the, again, that's one of those cases where I need to manually position the bottom of the chart so that you can see how far down it goes. For like, there was a 21% down iPhone and there was a 34% down Mac. And I need those to fit in the chart. So I just adjust those as we go. I hadn't thought about this white space you put in. You put in some of them have white space, but not all of them. Like wearables is showing a lot of white space above. Is that just because the numbers are fairly tight to the line, whereas in some of the other ones, it's way up? Yeah. And honestly, the wearables numbers were probably larger six years ago and seven years ago, and I calibrated it then. And I'm just going to leave it until I need to change it again. Well, yeah, because that home category is going to go through the roof.
[1:14:04]I mean, you never know. Yeah. Yeah, so, but these are, honestly, a lot of these answers are, I don't sit and rethink every single chart every single time. If it's working, I kind of let it go, and I don't worry about it. And because it is a manual process, that's sort of, it happens organically, let's say that. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, unless it starts to misrepresent the information, I wouldn't think you'd need to change it. Now, let's talk about one of my favorite chart styles that can be really confusing if done poorly, and that's Serape charts, where you add up a bunch of different things together and it always goes to 100%. So, as one goes up and down, it looks like a Serape. It's a Mexican...
[1:14:50]Piece of clothing that's got a design i should say and so you've got ipad across the bottom then mac then wearable services and iphone now i'm guessing that there was a decision in what order those go in because if you start with the most volatile one then the information on all the other bands is harder to see yeah that's it um the truth is services is not volatile and i should probably put it at the bottom um but it's also the second It's also the second largest, which makes me want to kind of leave it where it is. Because what I'm trying to convey with this chart is mostly what are the ones with the most color. Because that's giving you, to come back to the fact that my charts are at different scales.
[1:15:38]If I charted every revenue source on the same scale, most of them would be unreadable because of the iPhone. Right. And once a year, I do a chart in the annuals. At the very bottom, I do all my annual charts. Once a year, I do a chart of all of Apple's revenue lines on the same scale. And the chart is hilariously tall. But I do it so people can see, hey, look at the iPhone. And then way down there is everything else because the iPhone is so huge. So, part of my purpose here with this is not really to show a lot of detail over change over time. Because, yes, it makes services look spiky in a way that it's not. It's actually the iPhone that is spiky. That's what I thought this was. But I do want to get across, wow, there's a lot of blue there. And then there's a lot of purple. And then there are these thin layers of wearable Mac and iPod. And that's it. But I might move services to the bottom because it is so stable. And that's part of the idea. Yeah, when I looked at that, I did interpret that as services being spiky, but of course it's the iPhone that's causing it to look spiky. If you're taking votes, I would see it down lower, but you're right. Well, it would also show the rate of growth of services as a percentage of revenue, too, if it was on the bottom.
[1:17:01]Yeah, it depends on what you're trying to get across there. So that's a thing for me to think about. Whatever is at the top right before iPhone is going to look spiky. It's absolutely because the iPhone is so seasonal. So if you move it, wearables is going to look spiky. You can't win on that one. Let's see. What else did I want to ask you about? So far, I am getting that this is really easy to do and doesn't take any skill, talent, or patience. Right? Oh, yeah. Super easy. No problem. I did love that you referred to the Serape chart. You called it a parfait. that might be an even better name with the colors that you've chosen.
[1:17:41]Sure. I mean, it's layers. That's what we're doing here. We're just making layers. It's all layers. Well, one of the things I really liked, you've probably always done this, but I made sure to watch in Jason's post about the revenue for Q1 2025, he's got a video of him and Dan Morin discussing the charts. And that's the real value. I could follow a lot of it in the charts, but when I hear you talk about it, that's when I can find out, like to me, and I said I wasn't going to talk about the current information, but the gross margin change from five years ago at 38.4% to 46.9%.
[1:18:28]That's something that comes out in the chart if you look at the numbers, but I almost think like a big red arrow going, holy cannoli right there. Yeah. And I thought about actually making that a stack, which I don't have as a style, or finding another way to get across the idea that products gross margin is up a little bit and services gross margin is up a lot. And also services is growing a lot, which means that a higher percentage of the gross margin is services. And so that lifts that. But I'm thinking about it every now and then. But for now, this is actually one of my newest charts, if not my newest chart. And I think I had two profit and gross margin charts.
[1:19:15]And it's an interesting thing to track, which is just what's Apple's profit margin? And it's enormous. I mean, it's almost the company is almost making, um, 50% profit on everything it does. And it's actually what it is, is it's more like 30 something percent profit on its products and, uh, some ludicrous 70% or whatever on 80% on its services. It's a huge number.
[1:19:38]Yeah, I try to think about things that could be visualized that are in the data that I can get out. And every now and then I try something and a lot of times it never sees the light of day because it's not anything worth anything. And like I said, this is one I'm actually grappling with because I realize that this chart is misleading in the sense that it could imply that all Apple's margins are up a lot. And that, like I said earlier, it's more complicated because it's mostly driven by the services margins. So I need to find a way to visualize that and present that in a different way. Yeah, I think one of the challenges is you're working with a company that changes the rules.
[1:20:25]I mean, first of all, let's just say 38% profit margin on product is banana pants. That's incredibly good. But knowing that services has gone up into the 70% kind of range is also changing the rules. Because when you started doing this, services wasn't a big thing, right? So now all of a sudden the graph has to exist that didn't need to exist back then. A lot of things have changed. In fact, I wrote, there's a chart that I now generate that I generate because I wrote an article, I think three months ago, it might have been six months ago, when one of these things happened. And it got some pickup. It was kind of interesting. And I approached it in a very kind of calm, analytical way.
[1:21:11]I knew that some people were going to freak out about it because that's the internet.
[1:21:16]All I was observing is that one of these quarters, Apple's profits will derive more from services than products. And my question was, at what point does this change, if it does, change how we perceive Apple as a company? If they are actually making more profit from services than from the products they sell. Now, there's a lot of complicated thoughts there about the fact that the truth is the services revenue. You could pretend that it's unhinged from the products, but it's not true. Every bit of services revenue is coming from somebody who's bought and uses, you know, at least one and maybe multiple Apple products. So it's really not like that. But still, I was thinking about it. And so I made a chart. I actually charted out profit over product and services to see if I could see what it was looking like. And the answer is on those big spiky iPhone holiday quarters, it's nowhere near. But in the third quarter of last year, third fiscal quarter, when I wrote this article, that's when it was, they came really close together.
[1:22:23]And I have this chart now so that I can observe when that, if it ever crosses over, the total profit coming from services instead of product. One of my favorite things. So sometimes I chart because I'm thinking about it. There was a period in there where I challenged myself, and for about a year, I did a chart every week of something. I called it fun with charts. I would sit down on a Friday afternoon, and I would think, what chart am I going to make? And some of them were good, and some of them were super dumb. But it was an interesting exercise to do that. That is really fun. I think that's why I know you're my people. Because to me, working in a spreadsheet and charting things to some extent gives you information that you don't see when you just look at the numbers. I got to ask you, are you a pivot table fan? And in fact, I'm not a data wonk at all.
[1:23:16]And I don't feel truly comfortable in a spreadsheet. I know how to drive them. But I am one of those people for whom staring at the numbers does not impart information. And so I feel like it is necessary to find ways to visualize it so that people can understand what is going on. But that's how I approach it. I look at that in the same vein, but the pivot table gets me to a spot where I can then chart it and see what it means. So, for example, I was playing with there's some data available from the U.S. Government where you can download everything there is to know about everything about electric vehicles, like charging stations for like what are they for light duty trucks? Are they for buses? Are they for what kind of vehicles? What companies have which chargers? How many? It's this massive data set. So if you download it, you can't learn anything. But if you do a pivot table on it, you can say, okay, what if I restricted it by this and this and this? Could I get a data set that then now I could graph it and see what it means? I take the top 10 in this category and then make a graph of that, and then I could see what it means. For me, it helps when there's too much information to be able to make a good chart. And that's where it kind of jumps out. So I think pivot tables are the bomb.
[1:24:35]All right. Yeah. I view it all much more utilitarian where if I find a need for it, I'll learn how to do it. But otherwise, I'm just going to kind of, I'm a very two-dimensional table person. Okay. Well, if you ever get to that point, you could definitely call me. I'll teach you how to do it. Now I know somebody who loves them. They're super fun. Well, I got to say, your Six Colors charts are a national, international treasure. And if people wanted to learn more about them, they would go to sixcolors.com. I'll have a link in the show notes directly to the latest ones with the video with Dan Morin. Is there anything else you'd want people to know, follow you online, anything like that, or just read everything you write? Yeah, I mean, that's great. Sixcolors.com links to everything I want. There is one thing that we have not talked about that I'm going to mention because it was a lot of work and we've gotten to the end and I feel like I need to mention the final method by which this gets on the website. Oh, yeah. Because, Allison, where we left this, I have a tab in numbers full of charts. And yet, somehow, on my website, there are charts as images in a webpage. Oh, boy. I used to take a screenshot of every single chart and then name them and then upload them by hand via FTP to my website.
[1:25:55]And then generate the HTML with the image tag. I don't do that anymore. So what I did was I, there's not a lot you can automate really well in numbers, but you can, one of the things you can do is tell it to print a PDF. And so I actually have a script, there's an Apple script version, and there's a shortcuts version that works fine too.
[1:26:17]Um it tells numbers to output a pdf of the document uh all one each tab on on its own page it deletes all the other pages that aren't the page with the charts on it and then it runs that through a pdf to image uh command that generates a giant ping of all my charts. And then the script walks through the ping and based on numbers that I have calculated out, I've got little rules on my chart, invisible rules that I use to measure the pixels. I generated a grid by XY coordinates and it grabs each single one in that grid and slices them and saves them out as pings. At the right size optimizing the ping and my favorite thing that i added it actually looks at the file size and if the file size is below like 100 bytes so it's an empty square because they're not all full it just deletes that one it doesn't make that one um, And then it walks through the output, or it's been saving the output as it's been writing them.
[1:27:36]And then it uses those file names that it's generating to generate a blob of HTML code, which has like the figure tag and the image tags of what I use on six colors. And actually based on the location, because I know that now, it puts alt text in saying what chart that is. And so what happens is when I get all my charts in good shape, I double click on this automator action on my Mac or a shortcut on my iPad. But only when I'm traveling am I doing that. Basically, I'm using this automator action. And it's called Apple Charts Export and Upload. The reason it's called that is I can never remember the name of it and I always type Apple. So Apple is the first thing. And it runs it. It does all of that. It sections them all off. It spews them all out onto my desktop and then it FTPs them or now it uploads them via a web XML interface to WordPress, which is what I use now, and puts the result on the clipboard and then it beeps. And then I put it in my post. So, and if there's a problem and I need to do it again, I also have a version called Apple Charts Export Only that will just spew new versions onto my desktop and I can upload those manually to fix a typo or something that I did wrong. So that took a long time to build, but let me tell you, I probably built that like eight years ago.
[1:28:58]It's paid off. It is really paid off. So I wish there was a better way. That's the other thing I will leave you with is I've thought about using other systems to build these charts. And the problem is I would have to rebuild everything. And I got to be honest, most of like their websites that'll do it. I don't like the output. I'm not happy with the output. I think that there are lots of different, like I could build a Python script that would generate charts, they would not look as nice. Or if they would, I just, I have not seen...
[1:29:26]Charts from those kinds of outputs that looked good enough to replace the charts that numbers gives me. And so I would love to automate this even more, but I'm in a pretty good place where it's only a few things that I have to do by hand. And so just anyway, that's the piece de resistance of the entire thing is I have a script that sections it all out and posts it so I don't have to do uh taking screenshots because taking like 20 screenshots when you feel like you're under the gun and it's oh and they're never the same size and they're just yeah exactly unless you get the marquee right they're they're all a little bit too tall or a little bit too wide and then they go in a column and they're resized and they're not all that is done for me now i i sat down one day and yeah i output that image and then i counted the pixels but now it just and in fact If you looked at my numbers file, it's got horizontal and vertical rules. Those are the slices. I know that those are where the slices are. So if I make a new one, I make sure it's positioned. And in fact, one of my little areas, there's an orange rectangle. And the orange rectangle is literally something I created eight years ago or whenever I did this to say, this is how big a chart should be.
[1:30:43]It's literally just a placeholder of like, this is what the chart size is for all my scripts and everything. So anyway, that's the non-charting yet super relevant part of this is, if I didn't have that script, I'd be real sad.
[1:31:01]I'm really sad that I didn't think to ask that question. That is the obvious question. That is super nerdy. Now, how do you feel about sharing the contents of that script to put you on the... I may have written about it at six colors. I would have to go look, but I would bet you that I have written about it at six colors. Because I'm sure as proud of it as you are, you would have written it up to go, look what I figured out. I try, yeah, I try to do that when I do user scripting stuff on my website. But basically, it's, you know, the Mac version that I use most of the time, it's an automator with...
[1:31:36]You know there's an apple script that exports the pdf there's an automator action that renders it as an image and then there's an apple script that's the piece that i want to see is how it finds the charts that's crazy i mean it's like i literally have a an array called the columns that's uh the pixels of the column locations where the where they start and i have an array that is the rows that is the pixel of where the rows start, and then it just repeats through those arrays, as X and Y coordinates and slices them all out. No, you can't worry that anybody would steal this because theirs would never look like yours, so it wouldn't work on anything else. This is not the part that anybody would steal. Yeah, it's fine. I mean, I tend to post this stuff because I think you too may have a problem where you're like, how do I get things out of numbers or whatever? And then the answer is with great difficulty, but it can't be done. But if you do it once, yeah, no, that is so dirty. I love it. I wish there was a web-based tool. I wish there was something that was more accessible than a flat image, which if you use a screen reader or something, it's basically empty, you can't see it. I wish there was something that was like that also satisfied me in terms of the presentation, but I've never seen it. and every couple of years I look and I just shake my head and I go back to my charts.
[1:33:04]Well, they do look fantastic. And now I already said all those nice things at the end. Is there any place people should look beyond sixcolors.com? I mean, I've got podcasts upgrade at relay.fm and the incomparable.com is where my pop culture podcasts are. But if you go to sixcolors.com slash Jason, you can actually, that's a page with literally everything I do.
[1:33:26]Great. This is so much fun. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I enjoyed the heck out of learning all about the six colors charts. I'm happy somebody cares, because I just keep this all on the inside, Allison. Nobody cares except me, but I do care. So thank you for asking about all the stuff I do to make the charts. I was hoping that's how you'd react. I have a feeling the audience is going to like it, too. But thanks again. Sure. Thank you. Well, that's going to wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at alison at podfeet.com, like Christian did? You can do that anytime you like. If you have a question, a suggestion, you want to make some extra content for the show, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. You can follow me on Mastodon at podfeet.com slash Mastodon. If you want to listen to the podcast on YouTube, where do you go? Podfeet.com slash YouTube. If you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com slash Slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nosilla Castaways. You can support the show at podfeet.com slash Patreon, or with a one-time donation at podfeet.com slash donate with Apple Pay or any credit card. Or you can go through podfeet.com slash PayPal like George and add your little poem to the donation. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, you do that by heading on over to podfeet.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nosilla Castaways.
[1:34:49]Music.