Remember when Apple blamed EU tech rules – and more specifically the Digital Markets Act – to excuse the fact that Apple Intelligence wouldn't be available in the European Union? Maybe it was just a step into turning EU users against regulators since Apple Intelligence is coming to the EU in April 2025 along with support for local languages.

Apple released iOS 18.1 on Monday, marking the beginning of Apple Intelligence features, which finally will arrive in recent models for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. But it turns out, when it released Apple Intelligence at WWDC in June, that said rollout was going to be slow with only American English of AI initially.

And that's still true today. Although Apple Intelligence is technically no longer in beta, you have to make your iPhone or Mac think it's set to U.S. English. On an iPhone, Apple also verifies whether your Apple account has a European address associated with it. If that's true, you can't activate Apple Intelligence on your iPhone at all, even though you've set your iPhone to U.S. English.

On the Mac, it's a different story, as European users can try out Apple Intelligence features starting Monday. If you have a Mac with an M1 chip or later, you can change the language and enable Apple Intelligence right away. Observers assumed that's because Apple has been designated as a gatekeeper under the DMA in relation to iOS, iPadOS, the App Store, and Safari; macOS wasn't part of that list.

The company had already announced that support for additional languages was on the way, starting with localized English support for other countries in December 2024. Apple will add another dozen languages throughout 2025, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Apple Intelligence, however will begin to arrive on iPhone in the EU in a few months. "This April, Apple Intelligence features start rolling out to iPhone and iPad users in the EU, including many of the core features of Apple Intelligence, like Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration and more," an Apple press release said.

From this list, it appears that all Apple Intelligence features are coming to the EU, except … notification summaries? We have reached out to Apple for more information on what isn't coming to the EU and an Apple spokesperson sent us the following statement:

"We are thrilled that iPhone and iPad customers in the EU will have access to many of the core features of Apple Intelligence.". This writing tool, Genmoji, is a rewritten Siri that can understand much more natural language and encompasses chat and many more things; this will enable people to do so much more on their devices. As you recall, we have been hard at work on a pathway that enables us to ship as many features as we can within the EU with regard to DMA, maintains the integrity of user's privacy and security, and establishes what additional product engineering we need to do so. Looking forward to bringing Apple Intelligence features to users in the EU through future software updates.

Sounds like it's going to be hard to tell the differences. This sends us to this simple question: What was the problem with the DMA again?