IT Blog

Although the Apple TV 4K is a great streaming box, its remote control is—to put it lightly—polarizing.

The symmetrical design is too easy to hold upside down, and it’s so thin that it often slips between couch cushions. Meanwhile, the touchpad at the top rejects your feeble attempts at precision; you often over- or undershoot whatever on-screen icon you were attempting to press.

Now, a leading maker of remote controls for cable companies is stepping in to fix the remote itself. Universal Electronics’s Apple TV remote has a proper directional pad instead of a touchpad, along with dedicated buttons for pause, fast forward, and rewind. It also looks a lot heftier than Apple’s remote, so it has less of a chance of getting lost inside the couch. (The news was first reported by Matthew Keys of The Desk.)

Universal Electronics isn’t offering the remote to existing Apple TV users, though. Instead, the company plans to sell branded versions of the remote to cable companies, some of…