even though streaming video services have been around for years and years, apple will enter the market & suddenly everybody will be "WOW look!!! Apple invented streaming video! Amazing!"
Apple essentially invented a new market, just like Starbucks did. Were MP3 players (and expensive espresso drinks) available before that? Yes. Could you download music before that? Yes. What Apple did that wasn't so readily available before was made a device that could hold tons of music and had the market power to negotiate contracts to make music available for purchase on iTunes. Apple (and Starbucks) made their market readily available to the masses - whether it being available to the masses is a matter of perception or of a superior, easier to use product is irrelevant, what matters to the market is whether or not people are actually buying it.
The streaming video market is already pretty big and available to the masses through Netflix and Hulu. What's not so available to the masses is being able to stream the major networks in "real time" (which really means not having to wait a day to watch a new episode on Hulu). Sure, there are options, but those options are not so readily available to the masses - again, whether it's perception or a difficulty of use for non-geeks is irrelevant, what matters to the market is whether people are actually doing it. People hang on to cable either because (1)Hulu/Nextflix doesn't offer them what they want, or because (2) they're afraid of change. For group #1, offer them what they want and make it easy to obtain (and cheaper than cable) and people will go for it.
And people don't want to spend hours and hours figuring out new shit (or driving more than 3 blocks to a coffee shop), which is part of making things available to the masses.