My startup Pretty Graph is working on an online graph-making app, which will make such graphs easy to make in the browser. Sign up at http://prettygraph.com or email me at hrishimittal@gmail.com and I will let you know when we go live.
(My usual HN id is revorad, but I'm... err noprocrasting :-)
Good point John. The full site with previews and a trial version will be up in a few days. That's why I haven't posted an Ask HN review post yet. I mentioned it in this thread because people expressed interest in such an app.
I know the designers on HN will crucify me for saying this, but it seems to me there is a very real market for templates like this. Maybe even a blogozine startup?
http://flowingdata.com/ has a few resources and sources.. I think the answer is - for the really high quality stuff - the end result is normally always Photoshop/Illustrator.
I know Mint has had a lot of success with this style of infographic, but it seems like this took a lot of space to explain not that much. As another commenter noted, it actually makes it harder to find the answer than a simple article.
And I know the focus is on supposed to be on Apple, but the pie chart is hard to read because each slice isn't labeled and the colors are too close to each other. If they wanted to keep it unlabeled, they could have at least put the slices in color order around the pie, so which slice is which manufacturer could be counted out.
I didn't like it at all. I liked the graphic showing who paid who what amount of money (and why), but the other graphics were unnecessary and made it hard to find specific information. I didn't want to read the entire article-I wanted to find the answer to the question.
But then again I may not be the kind of reader they are trying to attract.
