As with most iOS updates, Apple has tweaked a few bolts here, tightened a few corners there, and generally given its mobile OS a coat of polish. Here are some of the more noticeable changes and improvements.

I gave Reminders short shrift in my , primarily because the app felt decidedly unfinished. That's been largely rectified in iOS 6: The interface for setting a reminder is decidedly streamlined and requires fewer taps, priorities actually show up in the interface, and glory be, you can set a location-based reminder for an arbitrary address. Add in some nice tweaks and simplifications on the interface--including an integrated calendar on the iPhone--and Reminder in iOS 6 is what it should have been in iOS 5.

Both get a subtle interface tweak in iOS 6 to get with the times. The former now provides more news at a glance and the former gains a less hefty, more streamlined look, thanks to a lighter weight font. Also, Local Weather is active by default, unless you deactivate it in Location Services.

What, improvements to the Clock app? Indeed! The app can now wake you up to any song from your Library, an excellent feature that's been missing for far too long. There's also a better interface for picking which cities you want to monitor time for--previously you could only search. The iPad, meanwhile, gets the Clock app for the first time, including a nice world map that gives you temperature and current weather for all the locations of the clocks you add. I quite like the bizarre grid-based Alarm screen, but I find the stopwatch and the timer a bit lackluster, though functional.