Apple Intelligence is launching today on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It offers features like generative AI-powered writing tools, notification summaries, and a cleanup tool to remove distractions from photos.

While the Tame Apple Press has been touting these features as a cure for cancer, they are pretty much available outside Apple’s reality distortion field for a while. The features will still be marked as "beta" in case an Apple fanboy can’t get them to work, and Jobs’ Mob has plausible deniability.

Siri gets a new look, but its most consequential features, like the ability to take action in apps, will not arrive until late 2025.

In the meantime, Apple has released a very "AI starter kit" set of features. "Writing Tools" will help you summarise notes, change the tone of your messages to make them friendlier or more professional, and turn a wall of text into a list or table.

You'll see AI summaries in notifications and emails and a new focus mode that filters out unimportant alerts.

A glowing border around the screen signifies the updated Siri, and it now allows for text input by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. We've seen much of this before, and it'll hardly represent a seismic shift in AI or the iPhone.

Apple says that more Apple Intelligence features will arrive in December. The other issue is availability.  For some reason, Apple is worried about allowing its Apple Intelligence products in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK and is delaying the launch until the end of the year. Additional languages are coming in April.

All this is making Apple and its latest iPhone look years behind the competition.