Apple Intelligence Review: Six Months In, Is It Actually Useful?
We've been living with Apple's AI feature suite since launch. Some parts are genuinely impressive. Others still feel half-baked.
Apple Intelligence launched with considerable fanfare and, depending on who you ask, has either transformed how people use their iPhones or quietly faded into the background as another set of features nobody turns on. After six months, the reality is somewhere in between.
What Actually Works
Writing tools are the clear standout. The ability to rewrite a draft email in a more professional tone, or summarise a long thread to a single sentence, saves real time. The integration across first-party apps is seamless in a way that third-party AI tools can't match — it simply appears where you need it.
Priority notifications and the summarised notification stack have also proven genuinely useful for power users who receive dozens of alerts per hour. The AI correctly prioritises time-sensitive messages the majority of the time.
What Still Needs Work
Siri's conversational upgrade remains underwhelming relative to the demos Apple showed at WWDC. Complex multi-step requests — book a table near where my next meeting is located — still fail or require precise phrasing. The gap between what was promised and what shipped is Apple Intelligence's biggest problem right now.