Available in French or available in France? We’re not sure if this is modern life just making us a bit paranoid, but we’re wondering if Apple isn’t trying to pull a fast one when it comes to the rollout of Apple Intelligence outside the USA.
All this comes down to the difference between ‘French’ and ‘France’.
As far as rollouts go, for all the headline hoopla it has generated Apple Intelligence’s arrival in the marketplace has been anything but straightforward. Despite being announced at WWDC 2024 back in June, it is technically all still vapourware. The first features containing it don’t arrive until October, and a lot of the more interesting stuff isn’t coming until 2025. It also only works on this year’s devices and the two Pro models of last year’s phones in the iOS space, as well as new iPads and Apple silicon Macs (the last probably being the largest installed base at the moment).
It’s patchy to call it kindly. Essentially, Wall St looked at the more hyperbolic revenue projections regarding AI circulating in the industry, said ‘we’d like a bit of that’, and indicated that any Big Tech companies not investing huge amounts in developing AI systems right now were going to be punished by the market.
That meant Apple had to accelerate its timeline for AI deployment fast. When Google trotted out it’s latest AI announcements in August, Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman commented that it was “hard to believe that Apple is anything other than 2-3 years behind in this area - at least.”
So, it’s playing catch-up. But if some of our suspicions are right, its also trying to throw a dummy at the same time. We might be completely wrong on this, in which case apologies for adding to the weight of conspiracy theories currently drowning out rational thought on the inter webs, but the language it’s using regarding the availability of Apple Intelligence is fairly specific and it has us wondering.
AI is, of course, coming under increasing regulatory scrutiny. China and the EU are urgently trying to rein in its breakneck development to prevent power further coalescing into the hands of just a few companies and, well, Skynet.
But it’s the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that is giving Apple the most concern when it comes to Apple Intelligence. That came into force a few months ago and obliges tech companies to obey new rules on competition and share data with third parties in a bid to ensure they don’t favour their own products and services above their rivals. Apple does not like this and has said it is withholding Apple Intelligence features from its phones in Europe. As a result, anyone wanting to get their hands on the betas of iOS 18 running some of the Apple Intelligence features in the EU has had to set their phones to US English and basically use a VPN to change their location to the US.
(As a sidebar, that seems not to have applied to Macs. As TechRepublic notes, it looks like Macs are treated differently because they are not defined as core platform services by the DMA. Like we said, it’s complex.)
All of which brings us to this.
In Apple’s ‘It’s Glowtime’ event, Apple's Craig Federighi talked about the rollout of Apple Intelligence.
“We're starting with US English in most regions around the world,” he said. “We'll add localized English for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December. We're working to expand Apple Intelligence to more languages like Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish, and will be rolling these out next year.”
The language of these sort of things is very specific and run past numerous banks of highly trained lawyers before it reaches the public domain. So, we can take it as canon rather than ‘mispeak’. In that last sentence Federighi lists the languages Apple Intelligence will be available in, not the countries. It will be available in French sure, but he doesn’t say it will be available in France. It’s the same elsewhere. It will be available in Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, rather than China, Japan, and Spain.
The language regarding English is a bit more nuanced but is still not a 100% guarantee of availability in any of the countries mentioned in that second sentence. You just have a tendency to assume that’s what he’s talking about due to the use of the word ‘regions’ in the previous sentence.
The footnote on Apple’s UK website about all this says: “Apple Intelligence will be available in beta on all iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, with Siri and device language set to US English, as an iOS 18 update this October. UK English support will be available this December. Some features and additional languages will be coming over the course of the next year.”
It’s announcing support for a language rather than availability in a country. It’s the same for all the other English countries (apart from South Africa, the localised Apple website there still talking about the iPhone 15). France has no mention of Apple Intelligence at all, likewise Spain; Japan says it “will be released in US English within the year”, China has no mention…
It’s all a bit of a mess. Tim Cook has said that the company is “engaged” with regulatory bodies in China and the EU and the company is likely working hard behind the scenes to get everything sorted out before those tentative dates arrive.
But for now it seems to be very much hedging its bets over whether that will happen and balancing that with the very necessary task of flogging new iPhones to customers. Sales have been slipping of late, especially in the critical Chinese market, and it would very much like people to be wowed by the new features in Apple Intelligence and be happy to buy new phones to access them. The only question is whether those features will actually arrive in the places it is hinting at when it says they will.
If I was eager to get an all-singing, all-dancing, fully Apple Intelligence-powered new phone, I would be wanting the situation to become a lot more exact than it is now before I parted with my money.
Naturally we approached Apple to clarify all this but we have yet to hear back. We’ll update this when they do.