Apple Intelligence Isn’t Ready to Wow You—Yet

So what can you do right now? Let’s start with Writing Tools, which helps you Rewrite, Proofread, or Summarize text wherever you are in the operating system. Rewrite changes the sentence’s tone from casual to professional, for example, while Proofread fixes typos and improves grammar. Too bad it’s nearly impossible to remember this feature exists, because it only shows up when you highlight words. Perhaps Writing Tools would be better as a little button built into the virtual keyboard.

You can type to Siri now, though this is technically not new. Previously this was an accessibility setting, which Apple has now baked into the experience, finally catching up to Alexa and Google Assistant which have had this default capability for years. Siri also has a new design, with a glowing effect around the screen, and the ability to understand queries a little easier, even if you trip up while asking the question. Still, it feels largely the same in day-to-day use, despite its new coat of paint—and that might feel like a bit of a letdown.

Elsewhere you’ll see the option to send Smart Replies—quick AI-generated messages based on the context of the conversation, like “Thank you” or “Sounds good”—to people in Messages and Mail. While this can be helpful, it’s hard to get excited about a feature that’s been built into Gmail since 2017.

Summaries are another big part of Apple Intelligence. You can use it to get an overview of web pages and even your notifications. If you have multiple messages from a group chat, the summary will highlight important things that were said and you’ll be able to click in to see the full details. I have yet to get much use out of this, as my summaries are often a garbled mess of words.

One time, it summarized my work emails and said “medical emergency” as a part of it. I checked my inbox to see what was up. Turns out someone said they were responding a day late due to a medical emergency but that they were fine. It wasn’t an important work email—glad to hear they were fine—but the summary made me check my inbox when I didn’t need to. More times than not, I found myself clicking into my notifications because Apple Intelligence highlighted something that seemed crucial but wasn’t.