Rumiko Takahashi, one of the wealthiest women of Japan, is the mind behind the popular Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura and InuYasha manga. These titles were brought into anime to enjoy even more success. Nearly all of her series are long-running, spanning many volumes and episodes upon television adaption.

Apple has maintained tight control of its FairPlay AAC format, electing not to license it to other companies. As a result, other online music stores cannot sell music files encoded with FairPlay AAC, and competing devices from companies such as Creative Labs and iRiver cannot play such files. Consumers who want to download songs from the extensive iTunes music catalog to their digital audio players have no choice but to purchase an iPod (or, as mentioned above, convert the downloaded files to an open format).

Apples currently markets five kinds of iPod: the original iPod, iPod mini, iPod U2 Special Edition, iPod photo, and iPod shuffle. Some of these models can come with different capacities (a higher capacity allows the storage of more music) or with different designs.