is it possible for apple to...

I find it seriously doubtful. Battery life can be improved by using or not using certain functions within the device. Telling the applications to not run in the background and such. However, a mono speaker is a mono speaker. Though not great, definitely worth having when you simply want to show someone something real fast.

The Touch is in fact a personal music player and really meant to be used with headphones. I'm sure if you set it up at say your desk in your office you can use external speakers. I know I have and do though the iPhone speaker I have (Altec Lansing) does not let me rotate the phone to landscape mode so I must use the external plug deal.

 

No.

It's hardware, nothing software, most they can do is tweak the equalizer default for it (but you can do the same). I highly doubt they will do that however, it's just not the best speaker (what do you expect really? a bose?) It's better than 1g iPhone as it is...

 

an alternative

I've looked at the 2G's at the apple store, and I wasn't impressed with the speaker when playing video..I couldn't even hear it all the way up after I had the store kill the musak!

I did some research, and found what appears to be a good, slim ultra thin speaker that attaches using the dock connector. It's being shipped from Hong Kong, and I expect it within a week or two. I'll let you know how it works.

 

You gotta be kidding, right? On loudest I can easily hear it, I normal keep it at 3 bars! It's not a bose, or a B&o or even a nice sony in sound, but it works! It's mono, so what do you expect? Wave acoustics I'm sure...