As I wrote before, iOS 10 is an odd release to talk about before it’s  generally available. Like iOS 8 — but unlike iOS 7 — almost all the good stuff is hidden in APIs, for use by developers. Which means that it’s probably going to be a nice update, but until apps are available it’s difficult to tell.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing interesting visible. Here are a few things that struck me.
- You get used to the the “lift to show the lock screen” feature on the 6s very quickly. It really is hard to go back to actually pressing a button to see notifications. I know, this is totally a first world problem
- Visual changes are subtle but mostly an improvement. I’ve not measured it but it feels that some of the animations are quick which helps overall
- “Share…” button when you long press a link in Mail. This makes sorting through iOS Dev Weekly (among others) so much easier
- Notifications really are much richer though we’ll only see the full benefit when apps are updated. Messages is almost worth it alone but makes other notifications all the more annoying as they just open the app
- Updates to the Music app are great. They even fixed the “add to next” / “add to up next” bug
- The updates to Messages really requires everyone to be on iOS 10. Messages look weird on iOS 9 and lower. For example, if you ‘like’ the message “Hello”, the older OS sees it as “Liked ‘Hello'”. Which, needless to say, is confusing
The final thing that I wanted to mention, is that after using iOS 10 on my main device for a few weeks, work gave my an iPhone SE which came with iOS 9. It immediately felt weird and I missed lots of stuff I’d barely noticed getting used to.
Maybe that’s the best proof of the pudding. It may not be dramatic but I miss it when it’s gone.