Apple's TV Deals, Like the Time Warner Cable Pact, Fail Its Ambitions

Apple has had grand dreams for its Apple TV, a Web-connected streaming receiver that first shipped six years ago. Customer dissatisfaction with rising cable costs offered the iPod and iPhone maker a chance to upend the economy of pricey channel packages with apps that could stream programming on demand. Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson he’d “cracked the code” on television, and Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook declared his “intense interest” in the company’s TV projects earlier this year. For years industry analysts have speculated that Apple might even roll out a full-on TV set, and the set-top box was a logical first step.

So Apple die-hards may be disappointed with the deal the company is close to reaching with Time Warner Cable. It saves little more than a click of the remote, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who aren’t authorized to discuss them. Right now, the $99 Apple TV box serves mostly as a hub for well-known online services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Vimeo. While the deal would add a Time Warner app, that just means viewers won’t have to switch from Apple TV back to their cable box: They’d still need to subscribe to Time Warner Cable and wait around for a technician to install it.