When Apple releases Mac OS 10.7 Lion, whether at next week’s WWDC, or a few weeks thereafter, I’m sure that the goal will be to entice you to upgrade as quickly as possible. Consider Snow Leopard. All right, it wasn’t intended as a major feature update, but Apple set the precedent for just $29, and sold loads of upgrades.

Sure, I expect Microsoft would boast that Windows 7 had far more new features compared to Windows Vista than Snow Leopard compared to Leopard. I’m not about to dispute that, though, aside from a few questionable interface changes and the expected bug fixes, Windows 7 doesn’t seem that much different, and surely not enough to warrant paying three figure upgrade prices rather than two figures.

Apple can certainly justify a much larger price tag for Lion, what with loads of new (and visible) features, not to mention the greater integration with the iOS. I can see the possible logic in that decision, because it eases the transition between iPad and iPhone and a regular Mac. Where possible, functions on one are carried over to the other. Apple cherishes smoothness. That’s why typing on a regular Apple keyboard provides nearly the same feel as a Mac note-book. It’s all deliberate, and it’s also why there’s a Magic Trackpad that mirrors the functionality of the note-book trackpad.

This is something the other tech companies can’t grok. They haven’t grasped the advantages of making their products work the same or almost the same as often as possible. To them, Apple is a walled garden that forces customers to exist in a restricted environment, rather than a brilliant move to free you from focusing on the machine, and, instead, concentrating on the task at hand, which is running the apps you need.

In any case, Apple will also be exhorting developers next week to make their apps compatible with Lion and, of course, iOS 5. Since the iOS is free, there will be no issues preventing customers with compatible hardware from downloading and installing the upgrade when it becomes available. By the same token, Apple will want to make sure Mac users adopt Lion quickly. You already know that it will be available from the Mac App Store, in addition to a retail copy with a DVD and a tiny user guide with tiny print. Apple hasn’t said that officially, but the facts are out there.

You also know that Apple has been on a price cutting binge for software. Aperture, a photo editing app, is ow navigable for $79.99 at the App Store, rather than $199, which is the price for the boxed version. I rather suspect that Apple won’t consider such a price disparity with Lion. There will be one price for all and, after suggesting that it will be $79 in a recent column, I’ve changed my mind.

When Steve Jobs announces the shipping date of Lion next week, the retail price, unboxed from the Mac App Store, or in retail packaging, will be $29. Since the online setup allows you to use software on all your Macs that are licensed under your iTunes account, there probably won’t be any “Family” edition, although there will be multiple user licenses for businesses.

Remember that Apple doesn’t earn much of their vast profits from the sale of the Mac OS. The product is built to sell hardware. This is what the fools who continue to clamor for Apple to license their crown jewels to other companies fail to understand. They still labor under the illusion that the core of Apple’s problems early on was the refusal to license the original Mac OS. Had they done that, they claim, Apple wouldn’t have been left behind in the OS wars with a single digit market share.

When Apple actually gave in and tried licensing the OS in the mid-1990s, it nearly killed the company. Apple is structured to sell hardware, not operating systems, the opposite of Microsoft. The cloners went after Apple’s key markets with a vengeance, so Apple was saddled with what appeared to be second-rate hardware.

Steve Jobs’ vision, one instilled in Apple’s corporate DNA, is to sell the whole widget. Operating systems do not exist separate from the hardware they run on. Thus, making profits from OS sales isn’t a priority. They also know that many more copies of Lion will sell if they reduce the price to a level that is hardly above a casual purchase. The $29 price you paid for Snow Leopard, for example, would buy you a large pizza with several toppings, a side salad, and several soft drinks. It’s as casual a purchase as you can get.

At $29, loads of Mac users will overload the Mac App Store servers to download the multi-gigabyte Lion installers. But Apple’s new server farm, being readied for the launch of iCloud, will be able to handle those demands with aplomb. Yes, people who prefer to have physical media (or can’t wait hours for to retrieve a download) will buy the boxed versions of Lion, but think of the benefits to the environment if you get a digital copy instead, and I haven’t begun to consider paying more than $4.00 per gallon of gas to drive to the local Apple Store to pick up the box. Does that even make sense anymore?

In announcing that, as expected, Steve Jobs would deliver the keynote at next week’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple revealed more than you might have expected. Predictably, you’ll hear about Mac OS X Lion, and iOS 5 — yes, Apple admits such a thing is under development. Surprisingly, Apple’s terse announcement on the event also mentions the long-expected iCloud.

Usually, Apple isn’t terribly revealing about the topics of discussion at a keynote or special media event. Certainly, the first two topics were givens. The Mac community has been discussing Mac OS 10.7 Lion for months, as more and more features are fleshed out and revealed by Apple, not to mention developers who seem to have forgotten their Apple nondisclosure agreements. You just know that an iOS 5 was on the horizon, although there have been few hints as to the bill of particulars, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

The big surprise was the revelation that there is an iCloud, and that it would be a cloud-based system of some sort. Apple acquired the iCloud.com domain some months back. If you test it, it points to the replacement, CloudMe, at least for now. You can expect that redirect will vanish next Monday.

After Apple spent a bundle building out a huge server farm in North Carolina, speculation has grown over what purposes it might serve. Certainly iTunes, the iOS and Mac App Stores, not to mention MobileMe, ought to provide a decent amount of traffic for Apple’s new data center. The other purposes iCloud will serve remain an open issue. Some regard it as the potential MobileMe replacement, with better email and online storage capabilities. In recent weeks, published reports claim that Apple has been negotiating with the major music companies to allow you to store — or mirror — your iTunes music library in the cloud without having to upload those files first.

Now you’d think that, since you already own your music, it doesn’t matter where you put the files, or what devices you use to listen. But with the entertainment industry, logic and reason often take a back seat to greed. Confronted with diminishing CD sales, and flattened digital content downloads, perhaps Apple was able to convince the industry that a subscription-based online music service, with cloud-based storage, might also represent yet another way to make a buck.

Yes, it’s possible Apple will offer some basic iCloud services as a free value-added extra for customers who have already enriched the company by buying iPads, iPhones, iPods and Macs. Maybe the basic features from the failed MobileMe service, such as email and limited online storage, will be included. If you want more, such as the ability to sync your music and movie library on iCloud’s servers, you will pay a monthly and/or annual subscription payment. If that’s the case, existing MobileMe subscribers, who already paid up to $99 per year plus tax, should get a substantial credit for their support, and, of course, their payments.

Typically, Apple would be late to the party with a cloud-based scheme. Both Amazon and Google have already introduced such services, perhaps partly in response to Apple’s expected moves. It’s also typical of the industry that these services are basically unfinished. You have to upload your files to the cloud first before you can access them. There are no music industry contracts, at least net yet.

When it comes to iOS 5, the expectations are focusing on two features that some regard as critical. One is widgets, something similar to what you already have in Mac OS X, though it hasn’t been so successful. The other feature, if it arrives, would address an area where today’s Android OS has it over Apple, and that’s the notifications system — and maybe it’ll appear in the form of a widget. Push Notifications in the iOS today is workable, but seriously flawed. You see notices in a modal dialog box, meaning you can’t do anything until you dismiss the prompt. If a new message arrives, it simply replaces the previous one. You can’t access a separate menu or function that’ll recall those messages, something that you can do with an Android OS device.

If anything, you have to wonder why Apple implemented notifications in such a flawed fashion, and why it’s taken so long to get it right, assuming that’s what they intend to do.

Beyond that, the wish lists are high, and, as usual, Apple will be able to fill only some of the gaps. I would hope that Mail will, at last, incorporate more of the features of the Mac OS X version, such as a spam filter, and rules. With rules, if you redirect messages from specific senders, or with specific subject lines, to different folders, they will still be redirected even when your Mac isn’t running. As it stands now, I have eight rules of this type. When my Mac is in Sleep mode, the messages that would be processed with those rules are left in the Inbox, leaving it to me to move them manually when I’m back on my Mac.

Even better, it would be really neat if Apple would let you import rules from, say, Microsoft Outlook for the Mac (and perhaps its predecessor, Entourage), so those rules would also be supported. Imagine if you could also import the rules you establish in other email apps, such as Thunderbird, or the email component of Opera, but I’m not expecting miracles.

What I am expecting is a fascinating keynote, and I have an outside hope that Mac OS X Lion will go on sale almost immediately after the event. But I’m not taking any bets, and don’t get me started about the possibility of a “one more thing” pronouncement, where an iPhone 4GS will debut.

At any one time, Apple may be involved in a number of legal fights. They are suing someone else for possible infringement of intellectual property rights, meaning it’s claimed that someone has copied an Apple product’s design a little too closely. In contrast, other companies sue Apple for similar reasons. Some of these are patent trolls, companies who acquire a boatload of patents, and then ferret out potential violators and demand royalties. If the target company doesn’t pay up, they’ll probably take the matter to the courts, usually in a jurisdiction that’s somehow favorable towards actions of this sort, as in East Texas.

Among the most significant legal conflicts these days involves Apple and Samsung. This is a curious issue, because Apple happens to be a huge Samsung customer (to the tune of billions of dollars, evidently) for raw materials, such as memory, displays, and so on and so forth. So on the one hand, Samsung earns a bundle from Apple, but Apple believes (or their attorneys tell them) that Samsung is stealing the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad with competing products, generally running the Google Android OS.

So Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung earlier this year, citing various and sundry “Galaxy” gadgets as possible culprits. Of course, such actions can take years to settle. Even if Apple emerges victorious, the inevitable appeals can take forever, unless Samsung, realizing Apple’s impact on their bottom line, decides to pay licensing fees, alter product designs, or take additional steps to mollify one very large customer.

As part of the discovery process, both parties to the suit will generally be expected to provide evidence to prove their case. So it stands to reason Samsung was asked to deliver samples of the key products that Apple claims violate the patents in question. In turn, as might be expected, Samsung has demanded that Apple provide prototypes for the upcoming version of the iPhone and “the next generation iPad that Apple will release, whether that product will be known as the ‘iPad 3,’ ‘Third Generation iPad,’ or some other name.”

Of course, it’s up to U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Haeran Koh, who was actually confirmed to that post by the U.S. Senate less than a year ago, to decide whether to grant Samsung’s request. If she agrees — and Apple doesn’t appeal of course — the evidence would have to be handed over to the court by June 17.

Meantime, this appears to be a motion that may well get the OK from Judge Koh, based on her comments about the need for reciprocal discovery at previous hearings. It would certainly seem a fair move as well, but it would create a monumental dilemma for Apple, regarded as one of the most secretive tech companies on the planet.

No doubt the 2011 iPhone upgrade is close to production, but the next iPad probably won’t appear until the early part of 2012, unless Apple rushes it to market this fall, which, while expected by some rumor sites, doesn’t seem terribly realistic. Sure, Apple is clearly working on future generations of their ironic tablet other products, development at this stage might be highly preliminary, so any prototypes Apple would be required to turn over wouldn’t necessarily represent the final design. I presume Apple can argue that point with a reasonable degree of logic.

The real issue, however, is how Apple would keep that information secret from the public, and what guarantees would Samsung be able to proffer not to disclose such trade secrets to outsiders — or even use it themselves. With the products Samsung has been asked to produce, I gather they’ve already been demonstrated, so it’s not as if secrets are being disclosed, other than possibly the internal hardware configuration. With Apple, it’s the opposite issue, and I wonder what sort of checks and balances a court can provide to protect the company — or will they care? Perhaps the samples would be presented in a judge’s chambers, or Samsung’s engineers and attorneys would be allowed to examine these prototypes at Apple’s headquarters, with the requirement that no information be recorded, photographic or otherwise.

Indeed, Judge Koh might have to consider the issues carefully before she decides which ruling to make, although some sort of discovery is no doubt a given.

Meantime, from recent press accounts, it appears Samsung expects to be involved in this case for the long haul, maintaining once again that their mobile gadgets are original designs, which do not in any way violate any Apple patents. They also claim to be unconcerned about the possible consequences, though that would appear to be little more than corporate spin.

But surely Apple wouldn’t have filed a lawsuit if they didn’t truly believe they would prevail in the end, although I suppose it’s always possible the action is meant not to stop Samsung from building mobile gear or getting a big cash settlement, but slowing the development process. If Samsung’s engineers and attorneys had to spend extra time examining every single facet of a design to make sure that nothing in Apple’s large patent portfolio is being violated, it would take a lot longer to get that product to market. That would only improve Apple’s competitive advantage.

Regardless of the outcome of the current motions, and the entire lawsuit, one thing is sure: Courts and judges can be notoriously unpredictable. You won’t know the final rulings until they are published, and even a good guess may not be possible, even if a judge’s comments in open court appear to point in one direction or another.

Up till recently, the common meme had it that Apple would devote the next Worldwide Developer’s Conference, scheduled for June 6-10 this year in San Francisco, to touting the latest and greatest Mac OS and iOS technologies. So you’d get an update about the status of Mac OS X Lion, and iOS 5 would likely be demonstrated as well.

What you weren’t supposed to get was new hardware. Unless there’s a major change in the lineup, new Macs are usually heralded with a couple of press releases, a short shut-down of Apple’s online store to revamp the product catalog, and perhaps a few press opportunities with Apple executives. That low-key approach hasn’t really hurt Mac sales. Even those cute Mac versus PC ads are history, but Mac sales are way, way up, particularly in the enterprise where Apple used to be an afterthought, while overall PC sales are flagging.

In recent years, the WWDC has also been used to introduce a new iPhone, but it may well be that it won’t happen this year. Supposed indications of early production of a new iPhone are said to be absent. Since the contract factories Apple uses to assemble such gear aren’t rumored to be stamping out increasing numbers of any new models, it appears the next iPhone won’t arrive until fall.

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