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 finally decided to give streaming music a try last week after I heard that Rdio (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) was releasing a Mac desktop client. Recently I’ve been looking for ways to break my iTunes addiction, but services like Pandora and Grooveshark don’t work for me because I hate having to keep a web browser open in order to listen to music.

After just a couple days, I’m proud to say that my exorbitant music spending is a thing of the past, because Rdio has officially replaced iTunes on my dock.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how the Rdio service works. By signing up for a $9.99 monthly subscription, you get unlimited music streaming to your computers and mobile devices. When browsing or searching through the Rdio catalog of tunes, you add albums to your “collection” and can build playlists that are synced with the cloud. If you are getting on a plane or heading to an area without a network connection, you can temporarily download content to your phone for offline playback.

Now those things are all nice, but they’re worthless unless the service has the music you want to listen to. I was pretty skeptical about Rdio’s catalog since there is so much talk in the tech world about the trouble Spotify is having while trying to secure deals with all the major record labels. However, I am overly impressed by what Rdio has to offer. The numbers don’t lie: I had music from 150 artists in my iTunes library, and Rdio had 143 of them available for immediate streaming. That’s over 95 percent. The Rdio Mac app even has a cool feature that will automatically go through your iTunes library and add the matching content to your online collection.

Obviously, not everyone is going to have the same level of success with Rdio’s catalog as I did (especially if you listen to more obscure artists). That’s why I suggest that, if you are looking to wean yourself off of iTunes like me, sign up for the Rdio seven-day free trial just to see how much of your current library is available.

I knew I had made the right choice to switch to Rdio when I looked at my iTunes shopping cart. The six albums in it would have cost me $62 from Apple’s service. They’re all available on Rdio right now, and I’ll be listening to them for the rest of the month for just $10.

Don’t get me wrong. The iPad 2 looks like a fantastic device (except for the obnoxious bezel) and the early reports say it is frickin’ fast. It’s by far the best tablet on the market, and the Android and webOS manufacturers should be terrified about their own future.

With that said, there is not a cell in my voluptuous body that wants to own an iPad 2.

I had sour feelings towards the first generation from the very beginning, and over the past year, I’ve realized that my disinterest is not directed at the iPad specifically – rather, I simply have not bought into the idea of tablet computing.

My stance can be summed up in a single thought: you are either an iPad person, or a MacBook Air person. There is no in between. I see no conceivable way you could argue that a person would need to own both an Air and an iPad, because in terms of software, the two devices are not that different at all. They run the same types of apps and, in theory, can be used for similar tasks. The hardware is what causes the split between consumers. Do you want to navigate the interface using a traditional mouse and keyboard, or do you want to use a touchscreen because everyone tells you it is more intuitive and makes you look cool?

In the past, Apple management has condemned the idea that the iPad could “cannibalize” the company’s success in the laptop market. Yesterday’s announcement of the iPad 2 convinced me that not only is cannibalization a possibility, it’s inevitable.

Strangely, it was the debut of the Garageband app that sparked this fear of mine. Apple portrayed the program as both a fun experimental app for novices and a professional tool for serious musicians. That blew my mind. I was watching a man play a drum set by tapping a single finger on a 10-inch screen, and I was supposed to believe that this gimmick was actually the future of music composition. In that moment, Apple transformed (or at least tried to transform) the iPad from a gadget for media consumption into a device for creative creation.

You see, Steve Jobs didn’t describe the app as Garageband Lite or a mobile version of the iLife program that runs on Macs. He basically said – this is Garageband, and this is all you need. And to me, that’s a clear sign that the iPad is on track to compete directly with Apple’s own laptop models. iMovie has already made the jump to iOS, and it’s only a matter of time before the other main Mac OS X apps (specifically iPhoto) do the same.

Personally, I don’t think it’s going to work. I would guess a lot of writers, filmmakers and musicians will be attracted to the sexiness of the iPad 2 and buy it compulsively, but then at some point they’ll have to realize that the time they waste trying to type, edit and compose on the touch device is not worth it when those tasks are significantly more efficient on a laptop or desktop running Mac OS X.

Yet Apple seems very confident that, at some point in the future, it can convince the majority of people that the iPad is the only device they need. Jobs was actually pretty obvious about it – he called the iPad a “post-PC” device several times during his presentation. Perhaps I’m being resistant to change, but I just hope the post-PC era does not have to translate into the death of the Mac.

Yesterday was a busy day for Apple. The company revealed a refreshed line of MacBook Pros, introduced the world to Intel’s new Thunderbolt technology and released the first developer version of OS X Lion.

Stuck in the middle of all that goodness was a bit of a peculiar announcement – Apple took the FaceTime application out of beta, put it in the Mac App Store and started charging people $1 for it.

The cost doesn’t bother me (even though the beta version was free), but I still struggle with the idea of FaceTime being a standalone desktop program. Sure, the FaceTime technology is cool and it’s great that you can video chat with people on iPhones and iPod Touches (as the commercials prove, FaceTime is the key to a happy family). But why didn’t Apple just build FaceTime into the existing iChat application? I’ve never heard a good answer for that, and I know I’d certainly pay $1 for an updated iChat app with FaceTime capabilities.

It just seems foolish to me for Apple to spend time and resources developing a separate FaceTime app when iChat already has the ability to do video chat. My only guess is that iChat is scheduled to die in the next version of OS X, and Apple thinks its customers will prefer a simpler video chat utility as opposed to having to figure out iChat or Skype. I hope that’s not the case, because if it is, it’s another example of Apple misreading the success of iOS and dumbing down the Mac as a result.

I’ve always hated Skype. I can’t pinpoint my resentment of the program; it’s a combination of elements.

Part of it is that the UI, especially on Macs, is ugly. Part of it is that it routinely takes me five or more minutes to log in to the service, when all I want to do is place a 30-second call. Part of it is that I get annoyed when people make it seem like Skype invented video chat. And part of it is that I think video chat in general is overrated and should be recognized as a gimmick that is useful in only very specialized circumstances (like showing a distant relative the mole you just discovered on the bottom of your foot).

Well now I can add another item to my list. Skype 5 for Mac is officially out of beta, but the company has announced that the biggest feature of the update – group video chat - is available only as part of a “premium package.” That means you’ll have to pay $5 a day or $8 a month to video chat with more than one person at a time.

Obviously Skype needs to swing a profit somehow, so I can’t blame the company for monetizing some of its services. But I’m still waiting for a persuasive argument for why I should use the program on a regular basis.