This is Apple's propaganda to try and save face. What happened is the EU stepped in and explained to them what the consequences of breaking the DMA would be.
Apple backed down, like they did a week ago with PWAs.
So? They removed them without any announcement for two weeks (hoping no one would notice), then officially announced it on their website when the backlash was growing.
They then backed down after Open Web Advocacy ran surveys, an open letter and the EU started a investigation.
Why would they announce if it's a beta? For all we know it could have been a bug or something, or an unfinished attempt to change it in some ways. I'm having a hard time imagining Apple just willy nilly nuking a fairly prominent feature many people use. Including myself, by the way.
You seem particularly willing to ignore the facts in order to paint Apple's actions in a good light.
Apple releases developer notes containing changes included in its betas. Such a change should obviously have appeared right away when iOS 17.4 beta 1 was released. It did not.
After two weeks of backlash, Apple did confirm it was removing the feature in a public statement. They just did not want to announce it publicly before.
After two other weeks of bigger backlash and the start of an EU investigation, they publicly announced they would not remove the feature after all.
They 100% intended to remove the feature, and 100% backed down.
It’s not clear that’s the case. Speculation on the HN thread when it happened was that there had been back channel talk with the EU to clarify that this wouldn’t be the case.
There are two sides to EU directive compliance: Commission action and legal action through the European Court of Justice.
Apple can talk to the Commission all they want and persuade them not to take action. However, they cannot bend the ECJ's ear. If someone forces the issue through the courts (yes, it's a slow procedure and yes the ECJ can choose not to pick up a case, but that's down to the skills of the involved legal heads), what will matter is the directive as written.
Apple will likely continue to drag their feet, but the outcome looks fairly inevitable. It might well come when we've all moved on to "AI, show me data" instead of using browsers, but it will very likely come.