The DMA doesn’t seem to have ever been about consumer choice, it’s about the choice of other competitors to have access to Apple’s customers without having to play by Apple’s rules. Just look at who was pushing for sideloading on iOS, I mostly saw Meta and Epic Games at the forefront. Why should Apple compromise my device’s integrity so that Meta can spy on me? I have no good answer to that.

I see an option to allow time sensitive notifications for apps not in my list of allowed apps, it shows up once the “allow notifications from” option is selected. I have no idea if it actually works though, as I’ve never used it.

You can still download the previous major version, which is free.