Apple iTunes: Technology Showing Successful Application of Quality Thinking

Documents that show what the instructor is looking for in the writing (attached as files):
1. Read How to Read a Paragraph pp 1-19 (Starting at "The Theory" up to "The Practice: Exercises in Close Reading")
2. Chapters 7-10 of The Craft of Research
Instructions:
"Module 2 Post A: Historical Example" was an open ended assignment to write about a success and a failure of critical thinking in engineering or technology. The purpose of this Module 4 assignment is to improve your Module 2 post. We have covered two skills to help you do this: how to close read a paragraph, and how to write a successful argument. You also have a grade and possibly feedback from one or more of your classmates to help improve your post.
There are four parts of this assignment. Include all four parts in a single post in the "Module 4 Post A" forum.
1. The first part of this post is a rewritten version of your Module 2 post. You should rewrite your post to reflect your close reading skills, the structure of a succesful argument, and any peer and grading feedback you have received. Each of your rewritten examples should have a claim, reason(s), evidence, and acknowledgments (and warrants if applicable). Use the peer and grading feedback to improve your post relative to the intellectual standards (e.g. clarity, depth and logic). Your rewritten post should be between 250-1000 words. Your rewritten post must reference three to six sources to support your argument; these sources will be used to create your annotated bibliography in the "Module 4 Post B: Annotated Bibliography" assignment. At least two of these sources should be peer-reviewed. At least one of your sources should present a contrasting point of view that does not support your argument. The "Article Databases" tab of the EGR 104 Library Guide (http://libguides(dot)asu(dot)edu/EGR104/articles?tiq=t&c=295589&_ga=2.94855124.937244935.1611787810-1717848301.1611787810) is a good starting point to find the sources you need. These sources should be cited using the IEEE style.
2. The next part of the post is a list of bullet points containing the major changes that you made to your original Module 2 post.
3. The third part of the post is your original Module 2 post, copied and pasted into this post.
4. The final part of the post is the critique of your original post to which you have chosen to respond, copied and pasted into this post. If you didn't receive any feedback on your original post, try to find a post on a similar argument and respond to the feedback that your classmate received.
My original post
Historical example in engineering / technology that shows a successful application of quality thinking: Apple iTunes
Historical example in engineering / technology that shows failure in quality thinking: Napster
Record sales hit a peak in 1999 of $14 billion. The sale of music in 1958 was only $604 million. So the century ended on a high note, and it was truly a century of technological advancement and entrepreneurial momentum. But at the same time, Napster arrived on the scene and burst the bubble of CD sales. Napster, one of the greatest technological failures of all time, popularized online illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. Napster’s meteoric rise hastened the shift away from compact discs to digital tunes. Before Napster, the notion that your entire music collection might fit on a hard drive was unimaginable. People could make or burn their own compact discs. Napster paved the way for streaming media (Links to an external site.) services and transformed music into a public good (Links to an external site.) for a brief period of time. No one knew how to stop the havoc that peer-to-peer file sharing was wreaking on the music industry until 2003 when Steve Jobs and Apple came up with a new way to access and purchase music online: the digital distribution (and great technological achievement) called iTunes. They paired iTunes with hardware like the iPod and the Shuffle which enabled people to take music wherever they wanted to. Consumers could fit their music catalog in their pocket and did not need to burn cd’s of their favorite songs. iTunes returned the single to its predominate position as the top configuration in the music industry.
Reason iTunes shows a successful application of quality thinking:
Steve Jobs of Apple exploited the market in a music industry digital age turning point. iTunes quickly became the world’s largest record store.
Reason Napster showed failure in quality thinking:
Napster’s greatest strength was the unfettered exchange of anything, including copyright-infringing songs and albums—eventually proved its weakness, forcing it to shift to a subscription-based model that ultimately drove it to bankruptcy.
Critique of classmate's post (mine did not receive a response) (part 4)
Author: Fredy Sandoval Ruiz
Hello Alyssa, I enjoyed a lot reading both of your examples. Myspace for sure was a failure, it is amazing what happen to it because it had such a big potential. I think their biggest mistake was to first tried to ignore Facebook, then to copy it and lastly to repurpose itself as a different type of platform. The lesson for any other company would be to have a cristal clear vision of what the company is about. I agree with you that mySpace had multiple technical issues but I would have loved that you presented some of those techical failures and present what facebook did different when you said that they applied more user friendly options.
On the other hand, you are absolutely right that iphone is one of the biggest innovations. I completely understand that there is a lot of people that dont like iphones because right now we have a lot of options, but the first iphone totally changed the smartphone industry. Touchscreen technology was something unthinkable and apple develop that technology in such a way that any person could learn how to use it almost instantly. That's what I call user friendly. I agree with you on your statement of a phone that mimics a mini computer, because it is incredible to think that space shuttle computers 40 years ago were much less powerful than todays phones. I would have liked that you included a more profound statement of why the iphone has been such a revolucionary device like for example that it changed the way we share and access the world's information.