It’s funny what different people get excited about. When I read up on the ios6 announcement this morning I was left singularly unimpressed at the announcements about maps and only slightly more impressed by the Siri updates.

Personally I was quite content using Google maps and don’t see Apple’s solution as a particular improvement. Yes the 3-D mode looks very impressive but how often are you honestly going to use it? For me this is not a replacement for google street view which we will obviously lose with iOS 6. From me this is very disappointing as I often use street view when going to an unfamiliar place.

There has also been a lot of talk that turn by turn directions will replace applications like Garmin or tom-tom. Personally I cannot see this. As far as I can see the new maps application will require a data connection in order for turn by turn directions to work. This is a massive problem when using turn by turn navigation abroad (which is a common use case). I will also be interested to see how it handles areas where there is no network capability. Personally I think you still need a local copy of the maps for such scenarios.

Siri on the other hand does seem slightly more impressive. My concern here is that it may be more impressive than the reality. In particular I want to see how many of the new options are supported in the UK. I can’t say I am excited about sports results, but it would be nice to be able to book movies using Siri. Of course some of the features are not region dependent like the ability to tweet, update Facebook and launch applications. These will be nice additions. We will just have to see how well they work.

For me the most exciting additions are probably the least talked about ones. In particular it will be great to have “do not disturb” notification settings and also improved phone facilities look incredibly useful.

I guess my point in all of this is that the headline improvements are not always the ones that make a big difference day-to-day. How much do we really use Siri or will we use the new 3-D mode on maps? Personally I have a feeling we’re much more likely to make use of the improvements with the phone itself and the little tweaks to social networking and notifications.