You can just click once to add an insertion point, good for one line of text, or click and drag a marquee to create a bounding box, for multiple lines of text. Basic type options, such as font, size, and alignment, appear in the options bar. To access more extensive options, like kerning, tracking, leading and baseline shift you need to sue the Character and Paragraph palettes. A new warping function allows you to create a wide range of envelope effects. Examples would be bulges and bends.
Type remains editable when warped as long as it stays on a text layer.
You can rasterize type as usual or convert to Bezier curves. Adobe has been working to integrate their various programs into a harmonious whole. Illustrator 9 incorporated many Photoshop-like features. With this release Photoshop incorporates several Illustrator features. You can now create layers with clipping paths.