I'll second Sierra. I used to love their adventure games as a kid, but never did get through one without a few hints. Story telling was always child-like or more of a hack-job (writer sense, not computer sense).

Lotus, for not pushing Improv until it was the dominant metaphor for spreadsheets. Modern spreadsheets are still a grid of cells. I can replicate their functionality and more using awk or python.

Sorry, but I'm going to say Microsoft. Microsoft ain't all bad, but their products are very hit and miss. On the plus side, they have fairly long support cycles, modern products are generally stable, and they pretty much let people modify their product how they please. I do have my complaints, which is why I added them to my list, but I won't go into them because of that flame bait aspect.