Wow! That’s a bombshell. We expected Lion would be available on DVD, USB stick and on the Mac App Store, but Phil Schiller says that it’s a Mac App Store exclusive… and he says it’ll be the easiest upgrade you’ve ever seen.

This should kill Hackintoshing and piracy of Lion, by the way.

“You need about 4GB in storage. And because it’s part of the Mac App Store it follows the rules… you can use it on all of your authorized devices,” says Schiller.

Price: $29.99, just like Snow Leopard.

And the developer preview? It’s available today.

As for widescale release? July.

The final Lion feature Apple wants to talk about today is the new Mail.app.

• Two or three column view, similar to iOS Mail.

• Smart new search suggestions. “It prompts you, when you select one, it becomes a search token, and you can have more than one,” says Phil Schiller.

• Conversation view, completely compatible with people who don’t have Lion.

It’s nice to finally see Lion’s default Mail.app catch up with the likes of Postbox, don’t you think? Hate the new logo though. Apple’s really embracing brushed steel again with Lion.

Next up in the Lion demo? AirDrop.

“The easiest way to share files between computers has been the old sneakernet… a flash drive,” says Phil Schiller.

Now there’s AirDrop, though, a peer-to-peer file utlility that allows you to easily send files to Mac on your network, with fully encrypted interface.

Wow. Just look how great that interface is!

Now Phil Schiller wants to talk about the Mac App Store.

“We launched the Mac App Store in January and users have already found it’s the best way to purchase and discover new software apps. It has become the #1 PC software channel for buying software in the last six months, and the developers who have come aboard have found some great success: four times the revenue they had before.”

What’s new in Lion? Well, Mac App Store is built right in, and not such a huge surprise, but in-app purchases will be coming. As well as push notifications, sandboxing, and Delta Updates.

As Phil Schiller takes the stage to talk about Lion, one thing’s for sure: OS X is doing better as a platform than it ever has.

As an install base, there’s now over 54 million users around the world. In fact, it’s doing better than ever. The last quarter, the PC market actually shrank 1 percent while the Mac went up 28%

The Mac has outgrown the industry every quarter for the past half decade.

Most of those sales are notebooks. 73% of all Mac sales are MacBooks.

Why are MacBooks so popular? It’s because OS X is the heart of Mac, and it’s ten years old today, and has evolved to become refined, powerful and beautiful.

Today, OS X evolves again into a Lion, with over 250 new features. But we’re only going to talk about a few of them.

“If the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, the software is their soul,” says Steve Jobs. “This year, we’re here to talk about the soul across three separate products.”

Those three things? Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud.

“Let’s start with Lion,” says Jobs, making way for Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi to take the stage.

With another WWDC looming on the horizon and Apple taking the unusual step of pre-announcing things like Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud, speculation turns towards what we haven’t been told. At many Apple events the most exciting announcement is often that feigned afterthought… just One More Thing.

This year, the One More Thing is rumored to be the iPhone 4S, despite the fact that Apple has set the expectation that WWDC will be all about software, not hardware.

We’re skeptical, but to keep you busy speculating over the weekend, we’ve updated Cult of Mac’s “Just One More Thing” interactive timeline to relive the excitement of the last thirteen years of Apple annoucements.

As a tribute to Steve Jobs’ famous “one more thing” keynote concluder, Cory Smith of Cardinal Media Technologies has recorded a rap to celebrate this year’s WWDC. Want to hear it?

The news keeps on getting worse for Apple in the wake of the Chengdu Foxconn explosion. Besides the ghastly loss of three lives and the dozens of wounded Foxconn employees, the explosion could cost Apple half a million iPad 2s. Given existing supply problems, that’s a number of lost iPads Apple can ill afford to lose.

Apple has today issued a press release and finally confirmed the launch date of the white iPhone 4. It will be available beginning tomorrow, April 28th, from Apple’s online store, its retail stores, AT&T and Verizon stores, and select Apple authorized resellers.

It was also be available from various carriers in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.K.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president – who confirmed in a tweet that the device would launch this spring – said in the press release:

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.

The device launches 10 months after it was first announced, with various manufacturing issues rumored to be the cause of the delay. Apple’s official statement will finally spell the end of white iPhone 4 rumors. Oh, Lord, what a wonderful day.