Reader's Choice: 2
Steve Jobs and his company move from strength to strength to strength. In the past year Apple and its still-very-much-in-charge CEO have introduced the game-changing iPad, months ahead of the largely absent competition (latest stats: Apple controls 95% of the nascent tablet market); survived Antennagate (the iPhone 4 wasn't all it was cracked up to be, but no matter); escaped any bad publicity over the dozen-plus suicides this year at its main supplier, Foxconn; gone to battle with Google over the future of the smartphone; and begun the transition from disk-drive-based computers to the radical flash-memory MacBook Air. Oh, and Apple's 50% stock appreciation this year took it soaring past Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company on earth and second largest in capitalization only to Exxon Mobil. Analysts are now eyeing Apple's growth in China, where owning a Jobs-crafted gizmo is a status symbol, and where the surge is just starting. After we named Jobs the CEO of the Decade in 2009, the bar was set high for this year. He cleared it -- and then some.
--Adam Lashinsky
NEXT: 4. Mark Zuckerberg
