Yesterday’s Apple presentation held in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts did not bring about massive changes or innovations. Nevertheless, the announcements are worth taking a look at, and here are some of them:

As most predicted, the greatest update is brought to the new iPod touch, now in its 2G version. Physically it’s now a bit thinner, sexier, and with a rounded, chrome back case. It now has a built-in speaker, and while it is not exactly surround-sound, it is useful for listening together with friends, or playing games.

Yes you read that right: the iPod Touch is now, according to Steve Jobs, not so much a simple music player as it is a portable gaming system. How does one obtain those games though? Well, through connection to Apple’s App Store, accessible by 820.11 b/g Wi-Fi, now built in to the Touch. This is not to say that music features have been completely forgotten though, as the Touch now has a Genius feature, which based on the song you’re playing selects similar songs and forms a playlist. While a handy feature, it is not altogether new as other players have had it for years. Another interesting perk is built-in Nike + support that can be used right away if you have the shoe transmitter hardware.

The iPod Touch is not the only thing to receive a re-vamp though. The long-awaited version 2.1 of the iPhone 3G firmware is now released. The update, available on the internet, fixes more than 100 bugs, not the least of which are the many dropped calls and the tendency of the device to crash if overloaded with too many programs from the App Store. According to Jobs, "This release fixes all that stuff—and it significantly improves battery life”. As the previous software release failed to resolve these issues, we shall have to test and see.

Perhaps the most welcome change though, is in the pricing: The 8GB version of the iPod Touch is now $229 (down from $299), the 16GB is $299 (down from $399), and the 32GB is $399 (down from $499), this brings it in line with competing Microsoft Zune players.

The announcements of yesterday’s presentations may not drop any jaws, but they certainly measure up to the standards which Apple is obliged to hold itself to if it wants to keep its 70% market share.