Oy, another tedious industry beauty contest to see who has the most Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. But! If we have to award another medal to the most

Oy, another tedious industry beauty contest to see who has the most Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. But! If we have to award another medal to the most popular kid in school, let's do it right. I am impressed that in the space of a decade Apple has been able to: -- Maintain world class hardware design across their entire lineup -- Achieve a substantial and successful global retail presence -- Write a world class desktop OS and guide it through two major architecture changes -- Write a world class mobile OS and scale it through a 10x performance increase -- Own the browser space -- Build a full mapping stack -- Build a partial advertisement stack -- Own digital audio players -- Popularize two major new forms of user interface -- Birth a major new form of user experience -- Become a major player in digital media sales and rental -- Permanently entrench themselves in ~The Enterprise~ without selling any ~Enterprise Solutions~ at all -- Tangle with mobile carriers and come out alive -- Tangle with the Korean chaebols and come out alive -- Tangle with Microsoft and come out alive And all this while still shipping the only trackpads in the entire industry that actually work. Kudos, Apple! You're still the prettiest girl at the party with the most cake.