Is Apple making the European Union a scapegoat with Siri AI?
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I used to fly all the way to California for Apple’s Developer conference, called WWDC. I’ve been an Apple fan for nearly two decades, I’m still iPadOnly, and I’m still a developer on their platforms with Nozbe. I even have a selfie with Craig Federighi taken at WWDC’19. However I keep being increasingly disappointed in Apple as to how they seem NOT to love us here in Europe. This week Apple announced the new “Siri AI” feature which when it ships, it will only be available in English and won’t be offered in the European Union. They wrote a whole press release about it, blaming EU’s DMA legislation (Digital Markets Act). What they don’t tell you are the real reasons behind this decision. IMHO it comes down to three words: greed, control and excuses.
- Greed — “we want all the money… or else!”
- Control — “we know what’s best for you”
- Excuses — “we can’t ship it, so we’ll buy ourselves time”
- Can Apple do better? I sure hope so!
- Bonus: Siri’s history by Joanna Stern
Greed — “we want all the money… or else!”
Apple is fighting everyone — the DOJ in the US, regulators in Japan, the EU, and many new places — about its App Store dominance.
And to be fair, they earned that dominance. The iPhone is the most popular smartphone on the planet. Together with Android, they’ve built a duopoly where two companies hold the keys to two mobile platforms. That’s exactly why the EU treats them as a “gatekeeper.”
I feel this firsthand. To get Nozbe on the App Store, I must use Apple’s IAP (In App Purchase) payment system and I’m not allowed to link to our own pricing page. All I want is to offer both — Apple’s system and an alternative — and let my customers choose. That way Apple’s payment system would have to compete instead of being forced on everyone.
Instead of loosening their grip while still collecting commissions from most customers, Apple wants all the money from all iPhone users. That’s greed.
In the EU they’ve been practicing malicious compliance by introducing additional fees like CTF - Core Technology Fee and very convoluted rules to offer alternate payment methods which essentially keeps us, developers, forced to maintain the status quo.
So what does this have to do with Siri AI? By withholding it, Apple keeps a bargaining chip in its fight with the EU over the App Store — and tries to turn EU customers against our own governing bodies. Good luck with that.
Control — “we know what’s best for you”
The DMA wants Apple to allow competing app stores, let developers offer direct downloads, and open core iPhone features to third parties. I don’t find these requirements unreasonable. They’d make the iPhone I own actually feel like mine.
The same logic applies to Siri AI. If only Apple’s model can access the data on my phone, they’re effectively shutting out OpenAI, Anthropic, and every AI model that hasn’t been invented yet.
Apple frames this as “protecting user privacy” — but without letting me, the user, decide. Sure, most people won’t want to give another AI access to their data. But some of us would. Even if the new Siri AI is good — and given Siri’s decade of disappointing us, that’s a big “if” — maybe I’d like to connect a smarter model to be more productive. They don’t want to let me, the iPhone owner, to do that!
I genuinely used to applaud Apple’s stance on privacy. That’s what makes this hard to watch: “privacy” has quietly become the justification for control. And once a principle becomes a convenient excuse, it stops being a principle.
Excuses — “we can’t ship it, so we’ll buy ourselves time”
Here’s the part Apple least wants to talk about.
This isn’t the first time Apple announced Siri AI. They made a near-identical announcement back in 2024. They never shipped a smarter Siri — it got a nice new animation and stayed just as clueless.
They’ve also never meaningfully expanded Siri’s language support. I’m Polish, and in Poland you can’t even buy a HomePod, because Siri doesn’t speak Polish. A fast-growing country of 40M+ people is treated as a rounding error. To quote the late Michael Jackson: “All I wanna say is, they don’t really care about us.” And that stings — because they used to make me feel like they did.
Now here’s the kicker. Siri AI is powered by Google’s Gemini. Gemini speaks Polish. So do ChatGPT and Claude — and dozens of other languages. Yet Siri AI will launch in September in English only.
So Apple — the $4T juggernaut — can’t organize itself to ship this faster, in more languages, even though the underlying Gemini model already supports them all.
What do you do when you can’t deliver? You buy yourself time, and you find someone to blame. You search for excuses. And the EU is a convenient target, because it’s a union of countries that speak 24 official languages. Far easier to hide a language-rollout problem behind a regulatory villain than to admit you’re behind.
Can Apple do better? I sure hope so!
Remember that Federighi selfie? Here’s the same guy, with a straight face (emphasis mine):
“Our hope is to eventually bring Siri AI to the EU, and we will continue to engage with EU regulators on a path forward. However, their refusal to engage constructively on solutions that preserve privacy and security means we do not currently have a timeline for Siri AI’s availability on iOS and iPadOS in the EU.”
The EU refused, you see. Apple refused nothing — except to let go of any of the total control it holds. Yeah… no.
I want to be clear: I’m writing this because I’m still a fan. I want Apple to fix this. I want the company I fell in love with back — the one that made me dream of owning a Mac. But the leadership steering it today feels greedy and controlling, and spinning our laws to cover their own delays is beneath the company I used to know.
Prove me wrong, Apple. Stop blaming the EU.
I know you can do better than this.