The new lock screen customization is nice, especially combined with focus modes.
Editing iMessages? YES. Dictating emoji? YES.
Easily extract photos from the background to send in messages like a sticker? Sure.
My iPhone 12 Pro feel way faster, especially Safari. Is it actually faster or are animations shorter? You know what? I don’t care. I like it.
Some things like making search prominent on the home screen will help many people.
The new password replacement stuff will be great. Can’t wait.
Live tiles to show the status of a pizza delivery or something like that on my lock screen? Handy.
Built in delivery tracking with ApplePay if stores opt in? Sure!
And none of that includes the stuff announced today for the new phones, like the notification/background changes that look nice.
ALL of that was off the top of my head.
This is a very good year. Not every year can be as big as multi-tasking/etc, but this year is not just piddly little nothings.
New updates brings features that might be important or useful to some subset of users, while to the rest of us they are something we need to deal with, either remove if possible or learn to ignore. Personally I use iMessage, a browser and a few other apps, but fairly irregularly. That mean that any addition to iOS is an annoyance. The lock screen, with all the gizmos, annoying and pointless. Personalization feature... Sort of pointless if you don't also allow me to disable the gesture that turns on the camera, seriously that is the ONLY personalization I wish to do.
It's understandable that they don't make it, but I'd like an iOS light. One that has the bare minimum of features, for those who use their phones for calls, text messages and a few basic apps.