Apple is currently at the center of an ‘epic’ storm that has again highlighted the company’s stringent policy of milking money from the App Store and how that is making life tough for developers. Adding more fire to the fuel, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has now claimed that Apple blocked updates for its free iOS app because it wanted WordPress to add in-app purchases, so that Apple could eventually charge the standard 30% App Store fee.

https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1296895027994431488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Just to make things clear, the WordPress app for iOS is free-to-use for everyone, but it doesn’t sell anything directly to customers. However, users could find information about certain paid WordPress tiers buried deep in the support pages or by learning about it from the preview of their own webpage using webview. And this behavior is what Apple found to be contradictory to its App Store policies.

https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1296917242228203523?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Again, the app doesn’t sell anything, it only redirects users to a page where they can find and purchase WordPress plans with certain advanced website features. But in the end, the $2 trillion company won. Automattic, the company that runs WordPress, has finally acquiesced to Apple’s demand and is going to add new in-app purchases within a month to the app. After getting the aforementioned assurance, Apple has agreed to let Automattic roll out updates for the WordPress app.