RUMOR: iTUNES CREATOR LEADING APPLE TV EFFORTS

Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public. Robbin’s involvement is a sign of Apple’s commitment to extending its leadership in smartphones and tablets into the living room. Before his Oct. 5 death, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he had “finally cracked” how to build an integrated TV with a simple user interface that would wirelessly synchronize content with Apple’s other devices.

“It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,” Jobs told Isaacson in the biography “Steve Jobs,” released yesterday by CBS Corp. (CBS)’s Simon & Schuster. Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment.