Mac OS X Lion is a couple weeks old, and although I’m still a tad skeptical about the blending of the iPad and Mac operating systems, I’m trying my best to embrace the changes and new features.

But there’s one change that seems obvious to me, and I’m confused as to why Apple declined to make the switch in Lion.

I’m talking about the desktop.

Since the birth of modern operating systems, the desktop has served as the place for users to dump all the crap they need (and some they don’t). When you look at most people’s desktops, they’re cluttered with all sorts of icons for shortcuts, documents and poorly named folders.

The small screens of iPhones and iPads don’t have room for that kind of clutter, so Apple smartly left the desktop out of its iOS operating system and replaced it with a grid of app icons that serves as a program launcher.

That same idea made it into OS X Lion in the form of Launchpad – a very simple dock tool that takes over your entire desktop and displays the icons of your apps in an iPad-like grid.

Combine that with Apple’s big push for full-screen apps in Lion, and the desktop just seems unnecessary.

If I was the OS X team, I would have made the Launchpad grid the default function of the desktop and routed all file and folder management through the Finder.

The magic of the iPhone and iPad is their simplicity, and part of that is the ability to rearrange the homescreen and keep your device organized with so little effort. No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to make an iPhone screen look cluttered.

So why not bring the same level of simplicity to the Mac? Kill the idea of traditional icons on the desktop and make it the home of your wallpaper and nothing more. The current approach to the desktop is just an invitation for disorganization and confusion – two things that will lead users to detest their Mac instead of adoring it.

I demanded titillation, and Apple delivered. Let’s jump right into the highlights of Monday’s keynote announcement.

• iOS 5 stole the show. The look of the new notification system blew me away, and I love that Apple will be making the lock screen useful with widgets.

• Lion is enroute. The next version of Mac OS X was the only software product Apple discussed on Monday that will be available in the immediate future. Lion has an unspecific release date of “July” right now, will cost just $29 and be available only through the Mac App Store.

• Who needs a real digital camera? iOS 5 will make the iPhone’s camera even more convenient, adding a lock screen shortcut and giving you the option to take pictures with the volume button.

• The official Apple to-do list is here. For six years, I’ve begged for a native iOS task list program that syncs with MobileMe and iCal. It’s finally here with the Reminders app in iOS 5, and the way it was described in the keynote made it sound like Apple just invented the idea of a to-do list.

• Now you can actually find magazines! One of my other major complaints about the iOS ecosystem has been how difficult Apple makes it to find newspapers and magazines in the App Store – especially since the company markets the iPad as a news consumption device. iOS 5 adds a tool called Newsstand that partially fixes the problem by organizing your subscriptions in a central location.

• MobileMe is still barely alive. As I sort of predicted yesterday, Apple killed the MobileMe brand in favor of iCloud but held on to the @me.com domain for email addresses. It will create a little confusion, but there was no way the company could sell the public on @icloud.com addresses.

• Apple only wants to store some of your pictures. MobileMe has a gallery feature that lets you store and share photos online, and it sounds like it will be replaced by something in iCloud called Photo Stream. Pictures you take on your iPhone or iPad will automatically be uploaded to iCloud and simultaneously downloaded to your Macs. However, there are data restrictions on Photo Stream that make the service slightly less thrilling. Apple says it will only store your photos on iCloud for 30 days, which means you’ll still have to find other places to back up your picture libraries.

• iTunes was almost an afterthought. Experts and bloggers have been contemplating the idea of iTunes in the cloud for months and months. Then Monday arrived, and Steve Jobs spent literally five minutes of his presentation explaining how iCloud will handle music. The essence is this: you can now download iTunes purchases on as many devices as you want, but there are no subscription or streaming options, and you’ll have to pay $25 a year if you want iCloud to host non-iTunes songs.
  
  Personally, I was happy to not have the focus of iCloud be on the music factor. Until Apple goes after the Rdio/Spotify/Rhapsody model of subscriptions for unlimited music, there’s only so much value the cloud can add.

Don’t be upset. I know it’s June and you were certain Apple was going to announce an iPhone 5 this month (even though I warned you three months ago that it wasn’t gonna happen). But really – don’t be upset. Apple’s developer conference, known as WWDC, kicks off tomorrow with a Steve Jobs’ keynote presentation that is guaranteed to titillate the tech world.

Apple has confirmed that Monday’s announcements will be completely software-focused and will include details on Mac OS X Lion (the next operating system for desktops and laptops), iOS 5 (the next operating system for iPads and iPhones), and something called iCloud (the future of Apple’s web services).

Apple is a business juggernaut these days, and its success has always been directly related to an ability and willingness to innovate. Tomorrow will be a pivotal moment for Apple, as Jobs outlines a product strategy that could redefine the entire company. My enthusiasm for Apple has wavered over the past few years, but I fully expect to be wowed on Monday – like to serious pants-tent levels.

Here are a couple of specific things to look out for:

• Music in the cloud – The rumors indicate Apple is working on a music locker service that will let you store your iTunes library online and access it from anywhere. That poses a lot of questions. Will music be part of the larger iCloud service? Will there be a subscription option? Will it work with non-iTunes music as well? My biggest hope is that we’ll see a brand new version of iTunes that finally deals with how bloated the application has become.

• A true iOS upgrade – The consensus among experts is that iOS 5 will include a better notification system and support for dynamic widgets. I welcome both of those changes but am secretly hoping that Apple does something truly dazzling with the new version to further separate it from the competition.

• The future of MobileMe – Will the introduction of iCloud kill the MobileMe brand? I was never a huge fan of the name MobileMe, but I think I’d much prefer my @me.com email address over an @icloud.com one.

• Prices – Charging $99 a year for MobileMe was laughable. I know this because I paid $99 a year for it, and people frequently laughed at me. The media and public’s reaction to iCloud will be heavily dependent on the pricing structure, and it will also be interesting to see if Apple decides to give away the iOS and OS X upgrades for free.

• Dates – While Apple will have plenty to announce on Monday, it does not necessarily mean all of the new software will be available starting this week. A September official launch is more likely, and you really can’t argue with that – considering Apple is competing with companies that tend to announce products 12 months ahead of time and sometimes don’t even bother to deliver them at all.

I think the most amazing part of tomorrow’s keynote might be how Jobs manages to discuss all of these topics without letting the event run over 90 minutes. And with all that juicy stuff to cover, I doubt anyone will be able to complain about the lack of an iPhone 5.

It’s been a few months since I switched from an HTC Droid Incredible to the Verizon iPhone, and the only time I ever miss my old Android is when I get in the car. The Android operating system features the full Google Maps suite, which includes turn-by-turn navigation and essentially replaces any other GPS device you have.

The iPhone, on the other hand, has a Google Maps app – but no native support for turn-by-turn navigation. It’s frustrating because obviously the technology exists, yet Google is in no rush to bring it to the iPhone since the two companies are such major rivals in the mobile space.

The selection of third party navigation apps in the iOS App Store is decent, but you’re going to have to pay up if you want a true GPS experience. Right now I’m getting by with the free Mapquest app and just praying I don’t get lost and actually need to use it.

However, there is hope. Deep within Apple’s press release following the location tracking scandal in April was this little Q&A:

What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data? 

Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

The wording is mighty vague – what kind of traffic is Apple talking about? Street traffic? Data traffic? Drug trafficking? It sounds like it could be a while before we find out, but getting a native navigation app in iOS 5 sometime this year would be a very pleasant surprise.

According to the Apple rumor mill, you should expect to see an iTunes-based music streaming service in the very near future. The only problem is that this service has been rumored to be in the “very near future” for a very long time (at least in tech years, which are capable of taking your new smartphone and making it old before you even get it out of the box).

Well, Apple might need to speed up its plans thanks to the bomb dropped by Spotify yesterday. Spotify is the streaming music company that emerged as a huge hit in Europe but has so far struggled to secure licensing agreements with the record labels in the United States. It uses a subscription model (similar to my beloved Rdio) that lets you listen to any song from your computer or smartphone for a flat monthly fee.

And now, as Spotify revealed on its website, subscribers can get that same giant library of tunes on their iPod Classic, Nano or Shuffle – even though those devices are not Internet enabled. When you connect a traditional iPod to your computer, the new version of Spotify will recognize it and let you sync your playlists in the MP3 format.

This is a big development because it marks the first opportunity to get music on an iPod without ever having to open iTunes. If Spotify is able to bring its service and this type of functionality to the U.S. before Apple launches its own cloud model, the iTunes brand could find itself in real danger of losing dominance in the digital music market.

The race has begun.