Excellent review, Wesley! And as one of the "pedants" who goes off when IPhones are said to have "optical zoom," I appreciate you specifying that they don't! My only disappointment with my 16 Pro, which I expected, is the 5x lens. Rarely do I need that much reach for photos, and when I back off to frame up in the 3x-4x range, the results are worse than my 15 Pro because now that range is all digital zoom of the 2x main lens. Of course, for the rare times I need 5x, those results are great.
With this initial release of Apple Intelligence, I'm now feeling there's an unexpected benefit to the slow rollout of AI features: I can actually focus on putting just a few new tools to good use and work them into my habits of how I use my Apple devices. Versus, at least for me, a whole toolbox of new stuff that I put to scattershot use for a while and never actually master any of it.
Besides the cool glow for Siri in 18.1 (which carries over to the CarPlay screen!), I've been impressed with the increased speed and snappiness of Siri. Which means, of course, that you can now get stupid answers faster! But seriously, the execution of commands like, "Siri, phone NAME at home," is noticeably quicker. And Apple seems to have dropped the annoyingly delayed "Mm-himm?" response when you invoke Siri, which usually led to exchanges like: "Siri, phone NAME at... Mm-hmm?" with that delayed response causing Siri to miss the word "home," and then the reply, "Which number did you want me to use to phone NAME? Work, mobile or home?"
