First of all, early talks don't mean that Apple is about to buy Hulu. As , "If you stop by a Subaru dealer and end up kicking the tires on a new Outback, are you in early talks to consider a bid on a new Outback?" Maybe so, he wrote, but no one will be surprised if you leave the dealership, and so far he hasn't heard from any sources who think Apple's a serious bidder.

But let's humor the idea anyway. While an Apple acquisition of Hulu seems to make sense because of Apple's interest in selling content on its own hardware, I can think of a few reasons why the companies would be better off separate:

John Gruber alluded to this point in on his Daring Fireball blog. Hulu's Website is based on Adobe Flash, which Apple notoriously . While you might argue that Apple could just convert the Hulu Website to HTML 5, that's not possible yet because HTML 5 lacks a solution for digital rights management. Until a DRM solution exists, Apple would have to bankroll an operation that continues to support Flash, even as the company tries to kill format through other means.