“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.”

Familiar complaints to some iPhone 3G owners, or to anyone who’s spent any time in Apple’s support forums lately. Indeed, Apple recently acknowledged the device’s reception problems. That said, the company’s “twice as fast, half the price” messaging does include the caveat “actual speeds vary by site conditions,” which would seem to absolve it of Smith’s charges of false advertising. And, beyond that, those who are disappointed by the performance of their new iPhone 3Gs had 30 days to return the device without consequence. Which is not to say that iPhone 3G’s performance hasn’t been disappointingly subpar or that it’s unreasonable to demand that Apple (AAPL) fix it. Just that Smith had recourse other than a suit demanding that Apple pay unspecified damages in addition to repairing or replacing all defective iPhones.