How exactly are companies supposed to intuit what the law actually means? Surely the written law has some sort of bearing on how companies can comply with the law. So many people have the attitude, “C’mon, we all know what the law actually means…” That is not a good foundation for running a business or for administering law.

How in the world can a business read the mind of a bureaucratic organization to divine what the “intention” of a law is? Apple thinks they are complying with the law. Either they missed something basic or the law needs to be amended/changed if they want Apple to do something differently.

EU laws do come with a lot of written intent besides the actual articles.

If you read any EU directive (like the DMA) it'll start with a bunch of recitals that explain the intent and background of the law. Sometimes these are longer than the actual articles.

As far as I, as a layman understand, the legal practice is that these recitals can not contradict the main text but that they are intensively used by courts and to politicians to resolve open questions where the formal law is appropriately unspecific.

So yeah you can read the intent of the law.

Apart from what the other poster said, Apple also had meetings with EU regulators. Who are not judges so cannot definitely say whether something is legal, but they are the other side in any case that goes to court.

As well, I don't think we can say Apple thinks they're complying with the law. That would be protected under attorney client privilege. They only weigh up the risks of penalties.

Perhaps the people who thought this would somehow make iOS like the Mac are interpreting the law in the stupidest way possible because they don’t understand commercial law.

The EU isn’t a dictatorship.

Courts there still follow precedent and legal principles, which means that the law has to be interpreted through the lens of established case law governing commerce, and how the court decides this will affect everyone else going forwards.