The Apple even has just given over a few hours back and the buzz is slow to die. Have you caught a glimpse of the new Nano or the new slim and upgraded version of Steve Jobs? Tis true folks, Steve is back and to no less than a standing ovation from the entire crowd at the Apple special event! Of course, there were more Apple employees there than journos there. Now on to the meat of things.

Steve started off with thanking everybody and urging everyone to consider donating organs, referring to his recent liver transplant. Next he went on to talk about the Genius technology and the app store. The special thing here is that the app store will use the same iTunes Genius technology to suggest new apps based on your current choices.

The next segment was about ringtones. After naming the iTunes store as the number one music retailer in the world based on sales volume, Steve went to mention that ringtones have been added to the iTunes Store. He said that there are currently about 30,000 ringtones in total right now from all four major labels.

Also mentioned in passing was the fact that the iPhone OS 3.1 is available for free download from the iTunes stores. The Ringtones are priced at $1.29. Preview is available and is of course free. Download and purchase is a one click affair.

Then came the announcement of iTunes 9. There are currently more than 100 million accounts at the iTunes store. The new version has something called Genius mixes. As mentioned when Genius was announced, Genius is a technology that will evolve as more and more people use it. Basically it is a complex database of user preferences when it comes to songs. Understandably, Genius has gathered a lot of data by now. So the new feature has the Genius technology mixing songs for you like a DJ by taking advantage of this database. Songs that go well together will be played one after another and this will go for as long as you want, just like a radio station. iTunes will automatically make 12 of these mixes based on the music you have in your library.

Syncing is better now. You can not only sync these Genius mix playlists but you can also select things like genre and artist from the music sync tab. Syncing also works with movies, events, photos, albums. iTunes now also give you the ability to manage your apps on the iPhone and the iPod touch. You can set up the pages and the home-screen just the way you want. Drag and drop, search with keywords (some people do have that many apps) and more. You can also choose not to sync certain apps.

New ‘home sharing’ feature in iTunes finally let’s you copy songs and other media to up to 5 authorized home computers. Songs can be dragged and dropped from on library to another. Also helpful is the feature that it will show you only those shared songs that you don’t have.

The iTunes store gets a better, ‘cleaner’ look. There basically has been some tweaking here and there to make it look more open and less cluttered. Nothing ground breaking there.

There is this cool new extra content available with your media now on purchase, called iTunes LP. Just like you used to get customized artwork and lyric sheets with LPs, you will get extra goodies in digital format with your purchases at iTunes. iTunes Extras are also available for movies, just like DVDs.

Also, you can now share content with your social network buddies directly from the iTunes store. iTunes is available for download right now.

iPod Touch was named as the fastest growing iPod. The Touch’s gaming capabilities were shown off, with everyone impressed by the smooth framrates. It was later revealed that the new iPod Touch has Open GL ES 2.0 inside, making graphics heavy games run that much better. Companies like UbiSoft and EA have made games for this device before and their representatives came on stage to demo their latest offerings. The highlights surely are: Assassin’s Creed 2 from UbiSoft and Madden NFL 2010 from EA. A Halo like FPS game called Nova was shown off by its makers – gameloft.

The iPod Touch drops in price to $199 for 8GB and a new 64GB version is introduced for $399. The iPod Classic gets a storage upgrade to push it up to 160GB. Price remains the same of course. The smallest iPod, the iPod shuffle is now available in multiple colors. There’s one special polished steel edition that looks very sleek and non-candy like.

Then came the ‘one more thing’, which turned out to be a video camera. Mind it, only a video camera. This, as you must know by now, is on the iPod Nano and not on the iPod Touch.

The Nano is fitted with a video camera that is on the back of the device towards a bottom corner, right behind one side of the clickwheel. The placement is not the most convenient but it looks like it was done to save space. The video camera shoots video only (so you still need your iPhone for stills) and it does that very well. That and a new color job (polished anodized aluminum finish) are the only things that are apparent on the outside. The new Nano is a direct competitor to all the comparable Flip and Flip-like video capturing devices in the market.

On the inside however you have things like a built-in-pedometer that can be connected to Nike Plus, an FM Radio (finally!) and the Genius mix feature. There is also VoiceOver, which means it has an integrated microphone. Better yet, it also has a speaker now. The microphone also allows you to use your Nano as a voice recorder.

The new colors look really great, especially with that finish.

So there you have it, another great product line refresh, courtesy Apple. It is still kinda bad that the Touch did not get a camera but there is a lot of logic that says Apple might not do that till another iPhone refresh. Enjoy drooling over the shiny new hardware in the meantime.