> On the third hand, I can't deny some amount of schadenfreude looking at Apple having to deal with the same "do the work first, we'll judge if it meets our review standard afterwards" treatment as they do to developers.

That's not really how the process was supposed to work. Apple has had a lot of discussions with the EC over the past year about this law and its implementation.

This is common and the goal is to help the company figure out how to implement it.

However, from the EU side, it seemed as if Apple completely misunderstood what the discussions with the EU were for.

Apple was mainly focused on trying to lobby against all restrictions, not realizing the EU already made up their mind. The EU was trying to prepare Apple, but instead Apple dragged their feet, remained in denial, and were then suddenly surprised that yes, indeed, they really can't lobby their way out of compliance.