Top 3:
Adobe, for rolling out the Photoshop and professional media development lines used so commonly today. Their vision saw us meet the image editor and take it about 5 steps further.
Connectix, for somehow making a PC emulator for the Mac that ran at a decent speed, was fully capable of just about everything the PC could support and just seemed to get better and better every time, they coded it well and never let themselves or the users down with a release.
FLOSS, to an extent. The influence this has had changed the industry forever, and in turn delivered some great examples of products from operating systems (BSD), to office suites and even games. However this community at times is known to get a little big headed, just look at the massive number of users who believe Linux is a good first timers/beginners operating system, when clearly it isn't at that stage yet. That aside though, the majority aren't like that.
Bottom 3:
Apple. They are, in my book, fairly poor when it comes not only to their mis-management of architectures which has seen a rollercoaster ride across the entire span of the Macintosh, but also placing eye candy over design and requirements (eg. iPhoto 6, Leopard). Finally, their stance on cutoff points in frustrating, a good example being Leopard, there is absolutely no reason it shouldn't run on Dual 800s or even just all G4's outright, it's planned obsolescence and I hate it. Period.
I'm not sure of the other two. They will come to me eventually though.
Adobe, for rolling out the Photoshop and professional media development lines used so commonly today. Their vision saw us meet the image editor and take it about 5 steps further.
Connectix, for somehow making a PC emulator for the Mac that ran at a decent speed, was fully capable of just about everything the PC could support and just seemed to get better and better every time, they coded it well and never let themselves or the users down with a release.
FLOSS, to an extent. The influence this has had changed the industry forever, and in turn delivered some great examples of products from operating systems (BSD), to office suites and even games. However this community at times is known to get a little big headed, just look at the massive number of users who believe Linux is a good first timers/beginners operating system, when clearly it isn't at that stage yet. That aside though, the majority aren't like that.
Bottom 3:
Apple. They are, in my book, fairly poor when it comes not only to their mis-management of architectures which has seen a rollercoaster ride across the entire span of the Macintosh, but also placing eye candy over design and requirements (eg. iPhoto 6, Leopard). Finally, their stance on cutoff points in frustrating, a good example being Leopard, there is absolutely no reason it shouldn't run on Dual 800s or even just all G4's outright, it's planned obsolescence and I hate it. Period.
I'm not sure of the other two. They will come to me eventually though.