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Apple named “Harware Company of the Year”

Published June 3rd, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, PC, Software, Technology

PC World has released it’s top list of 100 products in 2006, and also their 4 awards to various companies. Apple has won the ‘Best Hardware Company of the Year’ for introducing “products that made everyone else look bad. iPods (#36) that play video have created a new market for reruns, Core Duo-based Macs (#35) have expanded the market for Intel chips, and Boot Camp software (#10) has opened the door to running Windows on the Mac hardware.” Apple had five of its products in the list; the iPod nano (#4), Boot Camp (#10), the Mac mini (#35), the iPod (#36), and iTunes (#43).

The number one product was Intel’s Core Duo processor chip which is now being utilised in the new Mac Minis, MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as the Intel iMac. They are also being introduced into other laptops and desktops by other companies such as Dell, however they aren’t as widely publicised and talked about as Apple’s products. AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor came in second; Craigslist, Segate’s 160GB portable hard drive, Google Earth, Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0, Canon’s EOS 30D digital SLR camera, and YouTube.com finished in the top ten.

Yahoo earned the ‘Web Company of the Year’ for their ability to move “far beyond being a mere search engine” and even though “Google may get a lot more attention, but Yahoo has been getting more things accomplished” the editors said.
Adobe was Software Company of the Year, for their ability to ship “stellar US$100 apps that regular folks can use,” such as its Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premier Elements which bring cheap photo and video editing to consumers for a fraction of the cost of the pro level apps.
Finally, Sony merited Worst Company of the Year. “We get the feeling that Sony doesn’t trust people,” the editors wrote, mentioning the rootkit fiasco on their music CD’s as well as the PlayStation 3 and Blu-ray delays “due to difficulties implementing a second copy protection scheme … All this from the company that virtually pioneered copying with the Betamax.”

I think they produced a very fair list, with the awards being given to the companies that really did stand out. Click on the link to see the whole list, with links to PC World reviews of the products.