Apple Intelligence and the European Union

Apple Intelligence may not come to Europe. It blames the Digital Markets Act, regulatory uncertainty and compromised security if it needs to give access to third parties. Whether this is valid is not is uncertain but it does bring relief.

If Apple Intelligence doesn’t come to Europe then the key reason for getting Apple’s M devices or Apple 15 Pro and Pro max devices degrades. It means we get to save 2000 CHF or more, at least temporarily.

I don’t understand the problem, because from what I read, and understand Apple Intelligence is a self-hosted smaller language model, that, for the most part, runs on ‘our’ hardware, rather than the cloud. When it runs in the cloud it either runs on Apple’s private cloud or on ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is already available in Europe.

If Apple Intelligence runs on user devices, most of the time, rather than the cloud, why would the DMA be an issue? They blame “regulatory uncertainty”.

The key difference between Apple Intelligence and various alternatives is that it’s self-hosted for certain functionality, and integrated into various Apple products. With Apple Intelligence you don’t need to have two or three browser windows open.

As I wrote this blog post “European Union regulators accuse Apple of breaching the bloc’s tech rules” because it does not allow companies to steer people towards cheaper alternatives. This doesn’t worry me. What frustrates me is that if you get an Android App you need to get the same app on Apple’s App store as they did not recognise purchases on each ohters’ stores. This is made worse by pay monthyl and pay yearly apps.

And Finally

If Appple Intelligence is not available in Europe then the unique selling point of buying an M device or the most expensive iphone become moot. It would make sense for Apple to invest a little time and effort to clarify the situation with the EU to ensure that they meet EU requirements. Apple has the resources to clarify things.