There’s no denying that few individuals have left as indelible a mark on technology as Steve Jobs. Before passing away this past October, Jobs ensured his legacy as one of the greatest innovators of his generation. While at the helm of Apple, Jobs’ vision, passion and leadership led to the introduction of products that have changed the way the world communicates, creates and works on a daily basis. If a legacy like that doesn’t deserve a place on this list, we’re not sure what does.

With its lackluster technical specs and Android-powered operating system, it’s hard to see how Amazon’s Kindle Fire could stand its ground against Apple’s mighty iPad. With a closer look, however, Amazon’s tablet strategy becomes clear: By offering Kindle Fire owners access to a vast number of books, music, and video via a device that costs less than half the price of an iPad, they may have discovered what it takes to give Apple a run for their money in the mobile computing marketplace.

The fact that Apple wasn’t gracing us with an iPhone 5 felt like a kick in the teeth, until we got our hands on the iPhone 4S. While it shared its predecessor’s glossy good looks, under the hood the iPhone 4S was a very different animal. As upgrades go, this was a biggie: an 8 megapixel camera, an A5 processor, and of course, the inclusion of Siri, drove consumers to buy more than 1.5 million of the handsets during its first day of availability. Yowzers.

With MobileMe showing its age and the advent of a gigantic new data center in North Carolina, rumors were flying the past year and a half about the introduction of a new set of cloud services designed in Cupertino. Not one to disappoint, Apple unveiled iCloud this past June, and went live with the service in October, making it free for all iOS and OS X users. While it’ll sync data, manage your email and find lost hardware, we’re hoping Apple adds a few more features to the service in 2012.

In a move designed to strengthen their position in the aforementioned patent wars, this past August, Google bought Motorola Mobility -- along with its 14,600 granted and 6,700 pending patents -- for $12.5 billion. Fortunately for hardware vendors, Google announced that despite their acquisition of the company responsible for devices such as the Xoom tablet and Atrix smartphone, Android OS would remain available to anyone looking to dump it on their systems. We suppose you could call that a win.

Following up on the amazing success of the original iPad, Apple launched the iPad 2 this March. Thin, light and ridiculously fast, the latest iteration of the tablet includes front and rear facing cameras, Smart Cover technology, and up to nine times the graphical power of its predecessor. Despite facing stiff competition from upstart tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, 2011 has been the year of the iPad 2, with nothing else coming close to matching its popularity.

Not too long ago, companies gained the hearts of consumers by making products that everyone wanted to own or simply couldn’t live without. In 2011, courtrooms became the preferred battleground for marketplace supremacy. Technological giants such as Apple, Samsung and HTC have seen their fortunes rise and fall over disputed intellectual properties, with a few countries banning the sale of their phones and tablets outright as a result of the legal fallout. Why can’t we all just get along?

Within the space of a year, Canada’s Research in Motion has shifted from being one of the leading names in smartphones, to teetering on the cusp of economic collapse. In 2011, RIM suffered flagging demand for their established products, underwhelming reviews for their new smartphones, and saw their Playbook tablet panned by pundits across the board. If that wasn’t bad enough, their reputation was further damaged by drunk employees, broken promises and slumping stock prices. Ouch.

It’s unusual for Apple to release anything that wasn’t as close to perfection as they could manage it, but when it came to Siri, Cupertino was willing to make an exception. Leveraging the power of Wolfram Alpha’s computational engine, Siri offered iPhone 4S owners an unparalleled voice recognition experience unlike anything seen outside of a science fiction movie. Sure, it might be a little rough around the edges, but if it’s great now, think of what it’ll be capable of by this time next year.

This past summer, Hewlett Packard introduced the WebOS powered TouchPad: boasting a great operating system and one of the most venerable brand names in computing, it was a device that had the potential to be a hit with consumers. Unfortunately, when paired with the TouchPad’s sub-par internals, WebOS became a bag of hurt that couldn’t compete with Android and iOS devices in the consumer arena. After six weeks of poor sales, HP announced they were pulling the TouchPad from store shelves.