Adobe Acrobat
A lingua franca for electronic documents with easy text searching and hypertext links.
Adobe Photoshop
The leader in image editing for Macs and Windows PCs.
Apple System 7
The Mac OS was synonymous with GUIs, and System 7 continued the tradition with ease of use, true plug-and-play, and color matching.
Apple PowerBook Series
These notebooks define the standard for ergonomic mobile computing.
Apple PowerMac
Apple's well-planned and successful leap from CISC to RISC. The new Macs ran existing 680x0-based applications with PowerPC performance, and Apple sold more than a million systems in the first year.
Apple QuickTime
The technology that helped turn audio and video into common data types.
Digital Equipment Alpha
A 64-bit RISC processor that made its debut at 200 MHz when the then-standard 4
86 topped out at 60 MHz. The Alpha continues to reign as a CPU performance leader.
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Si series
The speed and sharp print quality of this behemoth laser printer almost single-handedly created the market for workgroup printers.
IBM RS/6000
IBM's RISC workstation introduced many to superscalar architecture at a competitive price.
IBM ThinkPad series
With its distinctive eraser-head pointing device, this family of notebooks provides the bellwether for performance and dazzling displays in mobile devices.
Intel 486
The processor that introduced an integrated FPU, on-chip cache, and pipelining to the x86 family.
Intel Pentium
This continuation of the x86 lineage doubled the perfo
rmance of its predecessor and helped Intel fight off attacks from RISC competitors.
Lotus Notes 3.0
Thanks to its unique replicated message system, Notes became the standard for blending e-mail, conferencing, and client/server database technology for groupware.
Microsoft Office
A business suite at its best with Word, Excel, Access and now tools for fast publishing of files on the Web.
Microsoft OLE Custom Controls
The Windows component model opened up componentware to a huge market of third-party developers.
Microsoft Visual Basic
Visual programming for GUI and Windows development reached a broad audience when VB arrived.
Microsoft Windows 3.x
Overcoming earlier missteps, Windows 3.0 started a f
lood of applications and the desktop environment most users live in today.
Microsoft Windows NT
Windows with preemptive multitasking, multiprocessing, and reliability for servers and power-hungry workstations.
Netscape Navigator
Navigator has defined sophisticated Internet browsers with multithreading capabilities and multiple active panes that enable efficient display of complex information.
PCI Special Interest Group PCI 2.0
PCI fulfills the local-bus design needs of Pentium- and RISC-based systems.
PCMCIA (PC Card) 2.0
This specification first defined how pocket-size cards would support modems, printers, and other general I/O devices.
Sun Microsystems Java
An interpreted programming language that is the newest best hope to fulfill the promise of delivered-on-demand software that runs on streamlined, distributed systems.
Sun SparcStation 1
SparcStation and workstation became synonymous for many people when Sun introduced this new standard for price and performance.
Unix System V
There's still no single standard for Unix, but System V version 4 came close by unifying Xenix, SunOS, 4.3 BSD, and System V.
1997 Editors' Choice Awards: BYTE Hall of Fame
