Time Warner would give up user interface control to an Apple cable box:

An executive with Time Warner has indicated that his company would give up control of the user interface of its services to Apple in order to broker a deal.

Well, duh. Who wouldn't want to cede the design headache for a cable box OS to someone else? And let's not pretend anyone's doing a bang up job right now. Have those interfaces changed much since the 1980s? Well, yes, but that's mostly to support DVRs. Often, it's still just an accordion of shows by channel.

What surprises me is that DirecTV or Dish isn't all over this for some sort of exclusive. Want to outfox cable? Have a better interface. And since many more folks could theoretically all have DirecTV or Dish than any one cable service, it's a no-growth barred proposition for Apple too.

So why isn't Apple pushing for DirecTV as a partner for Apple TV? One word: Cloud.

AppleInsider's post doesn't quite put one and one together, but they're getting there here:

Apple is said to have had discussions with major cable operators to let consumers use a branded set-top box to view both live television and Internet-based content. Apple is rumroed to have proposed an advanced cloud-based video recording service that some said would blur the line between live and on-demand content.

Apple was said to have been particularly interested in storing recorded content in the cloud, which would allow users to start any show at any time from a number of devices beyond their living room television set.

(pretty bad when the rumor site can't spell "rumored")

So the deal isn't just TV (duh). It's about zeroes and ones. Satellite providers don't have an interactive pipe into folks' homes. Cable companies do. Apple knows that interactive pipes are what drive computerized hardware sales. Satellite can essentially only drive conventional TV.

Apple's after much more than your television. They want your movies (commercial and personal), your refrigerator, your toaster, your car when it's parked outside -- they want your centralized, almost always on "entertainment" center and a front-row seat not just providing content, but providing access to all content.

Make sense? It's not about the TV. It's about the literal cable.

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