It seems like Apple clearly violated the policy it rightly should establish for any software on iOS. They deserve the penalty.
They chose to use tracking tokens in the first place. By default a computer does nothing, someone was tasked to write this. Apparently they did something wrong, maybe it was an honest mistake, but I find it a stretch to just assume or expect they are necessarily choosing what's best for users (and leaving money on the table) without more info than is public.
And this "arcane rule" is pretty much 50% of everything you read about GDPR (heard of cookie dialogs? they are not just banners anymore due to GDPR). Hardly arcane to me.
The difference is so obvious: Apple Maps doesn't even associate locations or directions to your Apple ID. Google stores your location at five minute intervals. The difference in privacy attitudes is vast.
People talked as if Apple did not and would not ever do such things, which was obviously false. Both companies profit by the fact that we keep pointing fingers in this sadistic duopoly and not look at the actual issue of privacy. I wished people showed more interest when in was more "fashionable" to talk of such issues, but back when snowden/assange/smaller individuals did it, the discussion always ended up with ad homiminems and irrelevant points directed to the messenger. The only difference between back then & now are the perpetrators: it used to be the governments, nowadays is companies (and governments colluding with them, which is arguably worse as corporations cannot be as easily held accountable).