Well, it was interesting (and refreshing) to see a little love lavished on the Mac side of things yesterday. As is the tradition around these parts, some random observations on Wednesday’s event:

FaceTime for Mac. Cool — even though we could see this one coming for miles.

Mac OS X Lion. The philosophical direction of Lion is consistent with everything we’ve heard in recent months: Mac OS X meets iPad. Expect these meetings to intensify in the future.

Mac App Store. This one is beyond huge, and exactly what Apple should be doing. In fact, I rambled on about this one here back in 2009. Imagine being able to buy your Mac apps the same way you buy your iPhone apps. Instant purchase, auto-install, auto-update. Customer reviews too. This is another gold mine for Apple, although it won’t come without controversy. Apple is injecting itself into the developer/customer relationship and demanding a cut, and surely some are going to buck. There are many open questions about how this will work, but it will happen — and it will make our lives way better.

Launchpad. Wow, convenient. I currently use third-party utility Overflow to do something similar. We may have to move them from the Happy Developer Column to the Swearing Eternal Revenge Column.

Misson Control. My secret confession: I rarely used Exposé and Spaces. I now realize that I hesitated for all the same reasons that Apple just combined both of them — along with Dashboard — into one convenient location. Thank you!

iLife ’11. Some cool additions, but the ground beneath my feet wasn’t exactly trembling. Love Movie Trailers in iMovie. Great price at $49 — but that’s just Apple’s way of saying, “Don’t expect $79 worth of upgrade.” I appreciate the honesty.

The black sheep. Poor iDVD. Nary a mention during the festivities. However, this is hardly unexpected, given Apple’s passing-over of Blu-Ray in favor of Internet delivery for video. Prepare for iDVD to be moved to hospice within a year or two. [Update: In all the excitement I glossed over the absence of iWeb — which is truly a mystery. It's not like people are less interested in making personal websites and blogs these days. This is an unfortunate omission, as it makes a statement about what Apple thinks is important, and how it allocates its software engineering manpower.]

The missing app. I had a secret wish, but it didn’t materialize. I was dreaming of new iLife app called iMagazine. It would allow mere mortals to use their Macs to create personalized, Apple-designed iPad magazines. Imagine combining your vacation photos and movies from iLife into a standalone iPad app that presents your whole story in gorgeous magazine format, as a series of articles. This could be uploaded and shared with friends and family around the world. In business, iMagazine would utterly revolutionize the idea of the “leave-behind.” iLife already empowers ordinary people to create and present all of these elements separately. Why not put them all into a Wired-quality magazine?

MacBook Air. This was needed. MacBook Air was starting to feel a bit like a hobby — a breakthrough idea that’s gone almost three years without an eye-opening update. This is looking cool enough that I’m starting to get the itchy trigger finger that often results in unbudgeted charges on my credit card. Believe Steve when he says this is the future of notebooks.

MacBook Air video. This is where I start to get cranky. It is not in Apple’s DNA to be formulaic. Yet these product videos haven’t varied in years. Same look, same feel, same cast of characters. Understood that normal consumers are not nearly as close to these things as we are, but honestly, it wouldn’t hurt to try a new format once in a while. There’s no chance they’ll drive people away — but there’s every chance they’ll make more of a stir. The product videos need to be just as creative as the products.

Missing in action. ’Scuse me, but where’s the new iWork? For every year that both iLife and iWork have existed (the last four versions), both suites were updated at the same time. This year, iLife went to the ball while iWork stayed home to scrub the floors. Curious.

Shipping dates. Wow. Either I missed something, or pretty much every product introduced today (except Lion, of course) is available immediately. Nicely played.

Last, I will note that this event shined the spotlight on a legion of Apple leaders. Probably more than we’ve ever seen in any one event. Even more interesting was the lead role given to Tim Cook at the start. Those making guesses about the secret line of succession have some good fodder to work with here…