[callmecosmas]

Actually at the bottom of page 2 of Maynard's preprint he states: "We emphasize that the above result does not incorporate any of the technology used by Zhang to establish the existence of bounded gaps between primes."

So it seems like it is actually a coincidence, though they were both building off of the same previous work (GPY) so maybe it's not that surprising.

[ww2]

That is only a tactic move. it is Zhang's work inspired him to look for a quick better alternative. Zhang showed " there is gold! " And then Maynard ran towards that.