“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.”

According to the CTIA, there are more than 246 million wireless data-capable devices at large in the U.S. today. Of these, 40 million are smart phones or PDAs, and more than 10 million are laptops. Little wonder that wireless data service revenue rose 31 percent to more than $19.4 billion in the first six months of 2009.

Revenue will no doubt continue that trend in the months ahead as wireless devices become more ubiquitous. Wireless carriers, then, would be wise to put some of their windfall toward building out their networks to cope with future demand lest they end up the butt of a joke in a rival’s advertisement.

Consider these remarks from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, spoken Wednesday at the CTIA wireless industry convention in San Diego: “We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: what happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour, or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum. The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis.”

“We are very happy that AT&T is now supporting VOIP applications,” said Apple (AAPL) spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. “We will be amending our developer agreements to get VOIP apps on the App Store and in customers’ hands as soon as possible.”

But the new policy hasn’t gone over well with AT&T investors. Shares in the company slipped on the news yesterday and they’re falling still further today. AT&T (T) is trading at $26.21 as I write, down more than two percent from its open. Why? Perhaps due to concerns that the carrier might take a revenue hit when iPhone owners who are using telephony services to make cheap calls switch to low-minute voice plans.

As JP Morgan analyst Mike McCormack notes, voice accounts for $50-$60 of the $95 in monthly revenue generated by the typical iPhone user. If the average user were to drop AT&T’s unlimited voice plan ($99.99/month) in favor of its cheapest ($39.99/month), the carrier could lose upward of 20 percent of voice revenue.

That’s an ugly drop. And while AT&T might offset it by raising its data plan rates, doing so would inevitably outrage customers who are already giving it hell for poor coverage and lousy call quality.

For one thing, Palm (PALM) is waiving its $99 app submission fee for open-source webOS apps. For another, it’s giving developers the option of selling their apps through the App Catalog or via a Web-based storefront.

The first option entails a $50-per-app fee and requires review and approval by Palm. This includes the chance to bid on priority placement in the App Catalog if developers wish. The second option requires neither fee nor review and allows developers to distribute their apps over the Web with Palm handling transactions and fulfillment–assuming the apps conform to Palm’s content and user interface criteria.

“By opening up a web distribution channel free from our review, we are placing a great deal of trust in you–the developer–and the community,” Palm said on its blog. “We want you to embrace these principles, establish a high bar of quality and user experience, and help enforce these rules.”

An interesting strategy–assuming developers do establish the high bar of quality to which the company refers. Certainly, it’s very different from Apple’s (AAPL) approach, which includes an application-approval process criticized as obtuse and byzantine. By offering developers the chance to pay to promote their software in its Apps Catalog or to distribute it via the Web without having to suffer through an approval process, Palm is positioning its program as the polar opposite of Apple’s. Question is, are these enticements enough to win their attention?

Priced at about $36 per user per year, iNotes is cheaper than Google’s (GOOG) Apps Premier Edition offering, which costs about $50 per user per year. And while it might not offer as many bells and whistles (IBM’s 1GB of storage is significantly less than the 25GB that Google provides), IBM (IBM) claims it more than makes up for it in security, reliability and privacy.

“We run the world’s most mission critical systems for banks, telcos and utilities,” said Sean Poulley, IBM’s vice president of online collaboration services. “It’s fair to say we’re pretty trusted….Candidly, Google has shown itself to be weak….There is a world of difference between supporting a consumer-grade service and a business-grade service. We’re bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition.”

Now this is just getting silly.

Pali Research says sales of the Palm Pre are slowing. RBC’s Mike Abramsky says they aren’t and claims 325,000 to 375,000 have been sold to date, ahead of his expectations.

Citing some decidedly unscientific poll data, Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede suggests the device is plagued by build-quality issues and a high exchange/return rate, potentially 40 percent. Abramsky says it’s between two and three percent and calls BS on the build-quality issue.

“Most buyers appear delighted with their new Pre user experience,” Abramsky said in a research note Friday. “Pre satisfaction appears higher than legacy Palm devices (e.g., Treo), affirming improved execution from the ‘New’ Palm, including engineering, manufacturing, quality and process improvements.”

So, Pre sales are slowing. Or, they’re not.

And exchange/return rates are high.

Unless they’re not.

And these analysts are on point.

Unless, of course, they’re not. Too bad it’s impossible to tell without official numbers from Palm (PALM) or Sprint (S).

How’s September of 2009 sound? Because China Business Network claims that China Unicom and Apple have finally inked a deal that will bring the iPhone to the country around that time.

Manufactured by Foxconn, the Chinese version of the iconic handset will reportedly be identical to the original in all features save one: To comply with the demands of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Chinese version of the iPhone will lack Wi-Fi support.

Why would people pay retail for a defeatured iPhone when they could buy the real thing on the country’s flourishing gray market? Well, for one thing, Wi-Fi-enabled iPhones are pricey–$695 for the 16GB model, $811 for the 32GB version. For another, they might not perceive Wi-Fi as a necessity, as Dan Butterfield notes over at iPhonAsia.

“While some consumers in China may prefer grey-market iPhones with WiFi, there are many millions that have never used WiFi on their phones and have only experienced 2G speeds,” Butterfield explains. “For this group, WiFi might be a less important feature. They may be more interested in iPhone’s enjoyable user-experience, entertainment value and status.”

Either way, defeatured or not, Apple (AAPL) benefits. “For China’s most tech-savvy power-consumers, WiFi will be important,” says Butterfield. “As a result, I suspect smuggling of WiFi-enabled iPhones will continue to be a profitable enterprise. Apple will be a prime beneficiary as grey-marketers will continue to acquire full-price WiFi enabled iPhones in Hong Kong….

“Using conservative estimates,” Butterfield continues, “I believe Apple can capture a full 2% share of the wireless market in China within the first 12 months of an official iPhone launch. That’s 14 million iPhones and perhaps another 2 million or so coming via grey-market iPhone sales.”

[Image credit: iPhonAsia]

It is an extraordinary market play. And an unsettling one. For it seeks to place Google (GOOG), which already collects vast amounts of data about our Internet use, at the very center of our information experience.

The privacy implications are, of course, horrendous. And while Google will inevitably dismiss such concerns as paranoid and argue that any data the company might collect at the OS level will be used only to improve its services and benefit users, it should still give us all pause. Because when it is finally launched, Chrome OS will be yet one more deep well of consumer data to which Google will have access.

There are already quite a few such wells, including Google Search and Chrome, that profile user interests and surfing habits: Gmail, which gives the company access to our email conversations, and Google Voice, which gives the company access to our spoken ones. Add to this Google Street View and Latitude, a service that tracks the physical location of its users, and mobile and desktop operating systems and, well…that kind of consolidation of Internet-based services around a single dominant company should give us all pause.

Lest we forget, Google is in the behavioral targeting business. Why would people ever use an OS developed by a company whose business is based on meticulously recording and analyzing their online behavior? Because they enjoy using its other services, I suppose. But there is a privacy-vs-ease-of-use tradeoff here. And with Chrome OS, it is unprecedented. Further, while Google might tout its “don’t be evil” motto as reason enough to trust the company with our data, there are other entities that don’t always share that sensibility. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that the federal government tried to force Google to turn over user search data to the Justice Department…

“Competition in the OS market should always be welcome, but Google is the special case,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Digital Daily. “It has become dominant across many essential Internet services–search, mail, video, online apps, and advertising. Coupled with Google’s growing profiles of American consumers and reluctance to adopt meaningful privacy safeguards, we expect that antitrust authorities in the US and Europe will view Google’s entry into the OS market with enormous skepticism.”

Jeff Chester, executive director of The Center for Digital Democracy, echoed Rotenberg’s concerns. “Google’s new OS has to be placed under the data collection X-Ray by US and EU privacy regulators and advocates,” he said. “Any expansion into the marketplace by either Google or Microsoft should generate intense scrutiny, especially for the privacy implications. These two are engaged in a global data collections digital arms race, which has far-reaching implications for consumers and their information.”

“The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data,” Microsoft explained in a post to the Outlook Team blog. “When a Google Apps user installs the sync plugin for Outlook, the plugin modifies a registry key which disables Windows Desktop Search from indexing and providing search functionality for all Outlook data, not just the Outlook data being synchronized from GMail. Because Outlook search relies upon the indexing performed by Windows Desktop Search, Outlook search functions are broken as a result. It is also important to note that uninstalling the plugin may not fix the issue.”

Uh-oh. Good luck finding that budget-request email you sent to your CFO a few months ago….

Google (GOOG) is working with Microsoft (MSFT) to resolve the issue, but the damage may have already been done. Enterprise is notoriously reluctant to embrace change specifically because of cock-ups like this. Enterprise likes familiarity. It likes seamless change. With Apps Sync for Outlook, Google provided the former, but it fell short on the latter. And that may inspire some companies that had been considering Apps Sync for Outlook to stick with Exchange for a while longer.

That’s a lot of Superpokin’….

Apparently our self-righteous outrage over Facebook’s tweaks of its Terms of Service or claims that social networks are haunted by sexual predators has done little to dampen our enthusiasm for them. “Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience,” said Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank in one of those “Fire: Hot, Bread: Good” announcements. “While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.”

Unfortunately for the companies playing in the space, social networking hasn’t yet done the same for the advertising experience. Indeed, as Nielsen notes, “The current level of advertising activity on social networks isn’t consummate with the size–and highly engaged levels–of the audience.” Nor will it be, unless the sites figure out a way to exploit the personal data of their users without making them feel like their privacy has been invaded. Nielsen’s big idea for achieving that goal: trial and error. “New approaches to the ad model are required for this challenging and complex arena,” the company explains. “It will take time to work out the magic formula for successfully advertising in social networks. The diversity and personalised nature of the environment means standard ad models–such as contextual search and standard unit sizes–won’t cut it. Different approaches across ad units and ad inventory will have to be tried, involving a trial and error mindset.”

Trial and error, eh? That’s been Facebook’s strategy hasn’t it? And as I recall, it hasn’t exactly been working out too well…