Hi,
I would say that I.T Applications has a lot of content to learn and actually understand. It is not only about learning the concepts, for example the theories to normalisation and privacy laws, it's actually about being able to apply this knowledge in unfamiliar situations. Take last year's exam for an example, the normalisation question for six marks required you have an understanding on how to apply the three stages into a brand new scenario. Other similar questions included the very last nine mark question on the exam which required you to apply your knowledge of databases and spreadsheets to a company and help them create a system.
I.T Applications has a good balance between practical work and theory work, however towards the exams I'd say it's better to focus on theory and play around with databases to see how you could tackle the nine mark question, e.g. by learning how to set date parameters and setting up one-to-many relationships.
In my personal opinion, I would say this is an interesting subject and something completely different from my other subjects but I'd say that you have to put in a lot of effort for this subject and you have to be willing to learn the finest details. You also have to stay motivated and continually revise due to the sheer content embedded within the course.
tl;dr, I.T Apps is only as hard as you make it to be.
I hope that helped.