Nice rundown of the first wave of Apple Intelligence features from Apple Newsroom. As I wrote last week, my favorite thus far is the notification summaries. The key is not to think of them as a replacement for actually reading the messages — they just serve the same purpose as a well-written Subject line in an email. They just answer — usually quite well — “What’s this stack of notifications about?”

Update: It’s not obvious, especially given Apple’s own hype over Apple Intelligence launching to the public with today’s releases, but you still need to sign up for the Apple Intelligence waitlist to get “early access”. When I signed up during the iOS 18.1 beta cycle, it only took an hour or so before I got in. No idea if that will hold true now that it’s a public release.

(The image generation features (Image Playground, Genmoji, Image Wand) in the next round of Apple Intelligence, in the beta releases of iOS 18.2 and MacOS 15.2 that dropped last week, require a separate waiting list. I signed up for that a few hours after the betas were released last Wednesday, October 23, and I’m still waiting as I type this. The only people I know who have access to the image generation features are those who signed up for it within the first hour — maybe less — of the betas appearing.)