Jason Snell wonders if AltStore should’ve poked the bear. He covers both sides well:
Is notarization a tool Apple can use to bypass all of Europe’s regulations of Apple whenever it feels like preventing users from running MacPaint on an iPad? Or is it something out of Apple’s hands?
Apple’s iOS “notarization” is a flawed approach, clearly at odds with the DMA. It’s appropriate for them to be called out until they fix this so that it matches macOS notarization, which requires no human review.