The definition from the article: "Companies that make physical products that have only recently started sprouting sophisticated software features"

For years, John has made a compelling case that TiVo is pretty terrible at making software. In fact, the very first episode of his old 5by5 show was entirely about TiVo. Some of his criticism include slow interface, bad menu design, and still using SD for the UI, even on HD TiVo's

http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/1

The prime example of software made by a hardware company might be OS X. It's a damn good piece of software. It's half the reason people buy the hardware, actually.

It's hard to call Apple a "hardware company" when they've been making software as long as they've been building computers.

Id classify them as a hardware company because their revenue comes from selling hardware. None of their software offerings are significant revenue sources by themselves, they're just there to complement the hardware making it attractive to buy. They've even made OSX upgrades free. They've been setting themselves apart from the competition for a long time by the quality of their software but that just makes them a better hardware company.

Well, they're not a software company. They make software which is bundled with hardware, not software sold separately, with the odd exceptions.