Remember when Apple blamed EU technology regulations – and in particular the Digital Markets Act – to justify the fact that Apple Intelligence wouldn't be available in the European Union? Perhaps this was just an attempt to turn EU users against their regulators, as Apple Intelligence is coming to the EU in April 2025 along with local language support.

Apple today just released iOS 18.1 with the first smart features available for current iPhone, iPad and Mac models. However, when Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at its developer conference in June, the company said it would be a slow rollout and the new AI features would initially be limited to American English.

And that is still the case today. Although Apple Intelligence is technically no longer in beta, you will need to set your iPhone or Mac to use US English. On iPhone, Apple also checks whether your Apple account is linked to a European address. In this case, you won't be able to activate Apple Intelligence on your iPhone at all, even if you have your iPhone set to US English.

Things are different on the Mac, as European users can try out Apple Intelligence features starting today. If you have a Mac with an M1 chip or newer, you can change the language and turn on Apple Intelligence right away. Observers assumed that under the DMA, Apple was designated as a gatekeeper over iOS, iPadOS, the App Store and Safari. macOS was not part of this list.

The company had previously announced that support for more languages ​​was planned, starting with localized English support for other countries in December 2024. Apple plans to add another dozen languages ​​throughout 2025, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

However, Apple Intelligence will also be available on the iPhone in the EU in a few months. “Apple Intelligence features will be rolling out to iPhone and iPad users in the EU in April this year. “This will include many of Apple Intelligence’s core features, including writing tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with better language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and more,” Apple wrote in a press release.

From this list it appears that all Apple Intelligence features are coming to the EU except… priority notifications? We've reached out to Apple for more information about what's not coming to the EU, but it sounds like it'll be difficult to tell the differences. This leads us to this simple question: What was the problem with the DMA again?