The first thing that stood out when I opened Safari is the new Reader button in Safari's address field. Just like Safari on the Mac, activating Reader enables a text-only view of webpages, stripped of ads, multiple pages and other distractions. The result? A nicely formatted, text-only reimagining of the article you're reading. It's in this mode that you can really see the Retina display in action: The result is like reading a high-quality, back-lit magazine.

Activating Reader mode in Safari gives you a text-only view of webpages, stripped of ads, multiple pages and other distractions.

In Reading mode, you can only scroll up and down through the story. A stationary title bar remains at the top of the screen, allowing quick access to font size changes and to a Sharing Sheet for quick sharing with friends.

The other big change is Reading List. Although this was introduced in iOS 5 as a way to save articles for later reading, iOS 6 adds a handy offline mode. Using iCloud, stories you save in Reading List are available for offline reading on your other devices and on Macs running OS X Mountain Lion.