The DMA strikes again
The European Union might be feeling a bit left out this September when Apple is expected to ship key Apple Intelligence and other updates in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.
It’s not that Apple doesn’t want to bring its own brand of artificial intelligence to the European countries. Features like Math Notes in iPadOS, generative AI Genmojis, inline AI writing assistance, and generative image editing capabilities across multiple platforms wowed developers and excited iOS, iPadOS, and macOS customers when Apple unveiled them earlier this month at WWDC 2024 in California.
At the time, it was understood that Apple Intelligence features would work in US English but most thought that was a language capabilities limitation and not one related to third-party entity’s restrictions.
However, now we know that Apple probably won’t roll out iPhone Mirroring, Share Play, Screen Sharing enhancements, and, most importantly, Apple Intelligence to European users this year. The reason? The EU’s Digital Markets Act.
Broadly speaking, the DMA is about ensuring that companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, ones that wield significant market power, do not abuse that control. As the EU sees it, Apple has abused its position, and last year the EU designated Apple as a gatekeeper and forced it to make platform-level changes like allowing third-party app stores to work with the iPhone.
