“…if you haven’t yet gotten around to upgrading to iLife ’11, buying a new Mac mini or MacBook Air essentially gets you iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand for all your Macs running OS X 10.6.6 or later (since you need at least that version of Snow Leopard to run the Mac App Store). And this isn’t sneaky or dishonest—it’s right there in the Mac App Store’s software license.”
It’s efforts like this that make it plain to see that Apple is very intent on eliminating physical software distribution as much as it can – at least for its own products – and emphasizing the Mac App Store as the preferred delivery method for its users.