I actually approved of most of the changes to Star Trek canon that he made. I generally thought they made more sense, and had a better emotional impact. Of course, I'm not a Trekker, so I could be missing others that really irritate fans and I'm blissfully unaware. I thought this reboot fixed about 90% of the stuff I really disliked about Star Trek and gave it a new lease on life where we could get some really great stories out of it.

For instance, I like the change to the origin of James T. Kirk's name. It makes some changes with parents/grandparents names and his inspirations, but it works better, and has a very strong emotional impact with me. The opening ten minutes of Star Trek always really get me, and as a single scene I thought was executed better than any other single scene in the history of cinema. It was stirring, emotional, heroic, sorrowful, and absolutely gripping. It allowed the rest of the movie to then have success.

The destruction of Vulcan solves huge problems that every Trek has been plagued with since the start, which is, where the hell are the Vulcans? They are the most prosperous, prolific, technologically advanced, and "wise" race in the Universe, and are actively keeping humanity back, tutoring them, developing them. Suddenly mankind just takes over and is the center of everything. There are a few Vulcans here and there involved in events, but largely the Vulcans just disappear. They take their ball and go home, and are minor bit players on the stage of the Federation and anywhere else. It makes no sense. Now there is actually a reason for them to be respected, to be great ambassadors, and not have their fingers in every pie because there aren't many left.

The Uhura/Spock romance I was OK with. This fixed a lot of the Vulcan problem with emotions too, making it very clear they have them, and the emotions are powerful, and Vulcans just work on ignoring them and focusing on logic. For me it made Spock more acceptable. I've always loved his character, but a lot of what he did didn't make sense without him having and acting on a lot of emotions that he wouldn't necessarily admit to. It also added some depth to Uhura's character, which I think was badly needed. Uhura was the original "token" black role, and while it was groundbreaking at the time, it is a glaring distraction now.