“When I logged into my MacBook Pro this morning, it was as if I had logged into my Guest Account and not my standard user profile,” one Snow Leopard user explained in Apple’s Support Discussions. “No icons on the desktop, the desktop wallpaper was the default ‘space’ photo and not the one I had assigned, no documents in the docs folder, apps behaved as if I’d never opened them before.”

Clearly, this is not what Apple (AAPL) meant when it claimed the OS would free up as much as seven gigs of space upon installation.

Obviously, this is a nasty flaw, and it’s a pity it has taken Apple this long to cop to it. But it has and, as the company told News.com yesterday, a remedy should be forthcoming. Said an Apple rep: “We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix.”

His take: It’s just another Linux distro.

“There’s many, many forms of Linux operating systems out there and packaged in different ways and booted in different ways,” Gates told News.com’s Ina Fried. “In some ways, I am surprised people are acting like there’s something new. I mean, you’ve got Android running on Netbooks. It’s got a browser in it.”

And, you know, the man’s got a point. The emperor has no clothes. Or if it does, it’s an old “Linux: Live Free or Die” t-shirt.

Gates’s remarks follow similar comments from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who yesterday said he’s not quite sure what the big deal about Chrome is either.

“Who knows what that thing is,” he said.

Sleeker than the somewhat boxy G1, the myTouch boasts longer battery life–up to six hours of talk time, one more than its predecessor–a 3.2-megapixel camera, a virtual keyboard that orients automatically from portrait to landscape mode and, more importantly, better customization.

Now that the Android Market has 5,000-strong range of applications, devices like the myTouch offer a more compelling proposition than even before. “No two myTouch devices will be alike,” Andrew Sherrard, vice president at T-Mobile, told News.com. “They will be as unique as the users that own them. What we have found is that once consumers know how to customize a device and they add everything they want on it, they respond very well to having a phone that is specially designed for them.”

Yep, they sure do.

A remarkable metric, given the economic downturn. How is it that gaming is thriving at a time when the global financial crisis is squeezing wallets? “There are a couple of reasons,” Ron Meiners, director of community for the Hollywood Interactive Group, recently told News.com. “One is the traditional value of entertainment during tough economic times. Like the great fantastic musicals in the 30s. Movies did great, because they took people’s mind off of the troubles they were facing. [And] videogames have great value as entertainment. The number of hours of solid entertainment that comes from a videogame purchase is much greater than a movie, for example, for very comparable cost.”

Chuck: Do we carry any Rush CD’s?

Morgan: No, but not to worry buddy! I have every Rush track on my Zune.

Chuck: Wait, you have a Zune!?

Morgan: Pfft! No, I’ll go get my iPod.”

– Some recent dialogue from NBC’s “Chuck” (see video below)

Microsoft is adapting its Zune digital music player to the “realities of the market”–those created by recent turmoil in the economy, as well as the harsher ones created by Apple’s (AAPL) iPod juggernaut. It’s slashing prices across the Zune line in the hopes of protecting holiday sales.

Once priced at $199, the 16GB Zune will now sell for $179. It’s 8GB counterpart will sell for $139, down from $149. And the 4GB Zune will sell for $99.

The price cuts come just two months after Microsoft (MSFT) introduced the third-generation Zune platform. “Hopefully we have a good holiday season,” Zune marketing director Adam Sohn told CNet’s News.com. “We’re trying to take into consideration what the realities of the market are.”

Those realities being as harsh as they are, is $10 to $20 off really going to be enough to trump financial concerns and temper long-running consumer disinterest in the device?