I remember reading (not sure what os) that notes and email would have rich text formatting, so we would be able to change text to bold, underlined and even different colours, is this in ios 6 or was this never implemented?

You can use bold, italics or underline formatting now in the Mail app. See this post for how: Email questions

Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the Notes app, nor is there a way to easily change the color. But, it's a start...

Marilyn