No I don't want a second screen seamlessly attached to my TV. No Apple does not have to play nice with providers. Apple is a behemoth and a bully. They likely make more money on content than any other company in the world. If one cable provider, plays hardball, Apple can go to another.<p>This is the iPhone all over again. Verizon turned down Apple, ATT knew it had to or it would come back to bite them. It bit Verizon for Three years after. Verizon publicly said we would like to be selling iPhones only two years after launch.<p>Now you have a larger playing field of cable operators, they all have antiquated systems, and Apple is going to revolutionize one of them. The rest will be begging to have a piece of the pie within three years. The only difference is the monopolistic practices of the cable operators coverage.<p>This article seems to miss the point of innovation when approaching the current TV climate. Adding needless features is not innovation. Changing the way we viewed a problem by solving it in seemingly unheard of way is innovation. To paraphrase ford, 'If I ask people what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse"'.
To be quite honest I am not sold on the idea that home TV will be revolutionised any time soon. The television niche is corned heavily, some would argue the mobile phone market was cornered heavily when Apple introduced the iPhone, but I can't honestly see what Apple can do that connecting up an XBOX or media PC to a 55" LED flat screen can't already give you. Apple might be able to win with content, but they'd need to onboard a few notable networks like AMC and HBO to get decent content but even then the problem of networks already licencing content to sites like Hulu, Netflix and launching their own online distribution sites.<p>If it were that simple, Apple would have already entered the market a long time ago. It was rumoured Steve was working on the problem, but the fact nothing has come to fruition might mean that they either don't have a solution or don't see any viable means of entering the market.