This year’s Apple WWDC has been and gone, and it’s taken me a while to get round to writing about what was unveiled during the Keynote. In part, that’s because it probably wasn’t as exciting as it could have been. The normal announcements and reveals felt very rushed because half of the presentation was saved up for the AI stuff.

I don’t know why that bit made me really uncomfortable. I’m not a massive fan of the so-called AI boom we’re in at the moment. A lot of what Apple were showing feels like it’s things they may have been working on anyway. And if they had revealed them gradually as the technology was available, in context with the rest of the presentations as normal, it probably would be fine. But to gather it all together under this big AI heading felt like such a grab for shareholder attention that it felt grubby.

But anyway, the good stuff that was announced during the Keynote felt relatively minor but oh my word, some of these things we have been waiting for for ages:

• The new Journal app is fun but it felt a bit useless as an actual record of things because it was a black hole stream of consciousness. Now there are goals and more importantly than anything, a Search and a Calendar, so you can actually see what you’re doing, and when.
• Pausing your activity rings because you are sick or injured. ABOUT TIME TOO.
• More customisation on the Home Screen, making all your apps the same colour is amazing but surely not going to be popular with developers? More customisation on Control Centre is a good thing too.
• Swapping out the flashlight and camera widgets on the Lock Screen for something you actually want! I find those two quite handy, myself, but can totally understand that if you don’t use them, it’s just wasted space.
• Scheduling messages to send later. Not sure how much I’ll use this but it feels like a great piece of core functionality that’s been missing.
• The maths stuff that notes can do now is mind-boggling. Completely useless to me but so impressive.

And we can only end the way the Keynote started, with all the exciting stuff coming up on Apple TV+.