WordPress, the iOS app, lets you build and manage a website directly from your iPhone or iPad.
Apart from that, WordPress.com also sells domain names.
Now, WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg accused Apple from cutting the ability to update that app – until or when it adds in-app purchases so the most valuable company in the world can extract its 30 percent cut of the money.
Heads up on why @WordPressiOS updates are absent … we were locked out by App Store. In order to send updates and bug fixes, we had to commit to in-app purchases for .com plans. I know why this is problematic, open to suggestions. Allow other IAPs? New name?
– Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) 21 August 2020
Here’s the thing: the WordPress app on iOS sells nothing. I just checked, and so did I. Stratechery’s Ben Thompson. The app just lets you create a website free of charge. There’s not even an option to buy a unique dot-com or even dot-domain name from the iPhone and iPad app – it just gives you a free WordPress domain name and 3GB of space.
To be clear, the app sells nothing, and why would it? It is an open source project. Apple requires the addition of functionality that has no plausible reason to exist.
– Ben Thompson (@benthompson) 21 August 2020
Is Apple seriously asking WordPress owner Automattic to share a cut of all its revenue for domain names? How would it even know which customers used the app? Or was this all a mistake? Apple, Automattic and Mullenweg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Wrong or not, it’s just the latest example of Apple’s frantic attempt to protect its cash cow, resulting in a decision that does not make much sense and does not comply with Apple’s ethos (really as imagined) to advance the customer experience already. the other.
Mullenweg is, of course, just one of those people who speaks publicly about the Apple tax and the uneven enforcement of the company’s rules. Yesterday, a group of major publishers came together to ask why Amazon, and not them, should get a sweetheart deal that could pay the giant e-tailer 15 percent instead of 30 percent for Prime Video. And all of this, of course, happens in the shadow of Epic Games’ gigantic battle against Apple, one that Apple responded to this whole afternoon, complete with a cache of emails from Epic’s own Tim Sweeney. You can see these links for a moment:
The WordPress iOS app was last updated on July 27, according to the App Store on the web.
Update, 4:38 PM ET: We now see on iOS that the app was updated 20 hours ago, and ask WordPress what that means; whether it is future updates that have been abbreviated, as previous ones.
