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.