Information Systems

Information Systems

APPLE IPOD CASE

Question 01

Apple, Inc. continues to win consumers and tons of market share with its various iProducts (iPhone, iPod, etc.) along with the ecosystems that come with these products (iTunes, App Store, etc.). Can the company keep it up? There are newer competitors who are offering huge catalogs of music downloads that work with any brand of music player (including the iPod and iPhone), but that hasn't stopped Apple from rolling over competing services in the past.

It's all about the marketing and consumer experience more than the breadth of selection and feature bloat. Always has been, and most likely always will. Yes, there are stepped-up competitors like Amazon.com, Inc. who have continually increased their efforts to take market share away from Apple's online content offerings. What has it done? Basically, nothing. Add to that Best Buy, Inc.-owned Napster.

Even Microsoft Corporation.'s misguided Zune could not wrestle much market share away from Apple, even with a compelling hardware music player and a decent content store competitor. If there are any competitors who want to seriously dent Apple's stranglehold on digital content, it will take more than a "me too" approach -- even with a superior-designed product. A shift buoyed by an incredible marketing effort is just the beginning of what it will take. Until then, Apple will reign king over digital content distribution. And, its shares will sit pretty just like they've done since the start of 2009 -- even in a recession.

Question 02

Working closely with the iPod model, Jobs and crew have already started implementing a more closed-system with its upcoming product line.

For instance, the new MacBook Air. Doing away with the CD drive, Apple is forcing consumers to purchase and download new software directly from Apple's online iTunes Software Store. While some have been critical of this decision, industry experts agree this is a smart move, as it prevents the spread of viruses.

In a same manner, Apple is locking their Safari web browser to Apple's own version of the Internet known as eWorld, again in an attempt to protect users from information overload.

Rumors on the development of the next iMac show the USB ports being removed, and the keyboard and mouse being wired directly to the computer. This will prevent users from using USB drives to share files, a move applauded by the RIAA, as most files shared are illegal MP3s.

Question 03

Using Boot Camp 3.0, you can open and read files on Mac OS X volumes when booted into Windows. You can also copy photos, documents and other files from a Mac OS X volume into the Windows partition. The Boot Camp control panel includes new features that allow you to change the behavior of the power button on an Apple Cinema Display and disable the display's brightness controls. The ability to tap the trackpad to click the mouse button is now supported on all Mac portables that run Boot Camp. A system administrator can now change the startup disk selection of a Mac running Windows using Boot ...