Apple's June 30 deadline for companies to submit to its rules for in-app purchases is almost here, and in order to comply with the guidelines, one popular app has made a slight change.
Hulu has tweaked its Hulu Plus iPad app, removing a link to the site outside of the app where users can subscribe to the service, All Things D's Peter Kafka reports.
The old version of the app featured a link on the login screen that would direct users to hulu.com/plus to subscribe, but Apple's rules ban "apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app." If that link were to appear, Hulu would have to hand over 30 percent of subscription sales to Apple.
In fact, Apple requires that companies give Apple 30 percent of all purchases made within iOS apps. Apple originally divulged new guidelines for in-app purchases back in February, when it unveiled subscriptions for publishing apps. The revenue-sharing rule has been a particularly controversial prong of the guidelines, and magazine publishers have been slow to sign onto the platform. Two of the biggest publishers, Conde Nast and Hearst, didn't announce plans for iOS subscriptions until early last month.
Apple has tweaked these rules a bit, but the ban on external links remains. However, Apple ditched a rule that required subscriptions to be offered at the same price within an app that they are elsewhere. Apple balked only after the Financial Times decided against yielding to Apple's demands and instead launched its own HTML5-based Web app.
Now that Hulu has bowed to mighty Apple, it's possible that other companies like Netflix and Amazon will give in before the rapidly-approaching deadline.