A couple weeks ago, one of my friends brought me a new MacBook Air from the States, and as he delivered it to me, he — a die-hard Windows user — eloquently endorsed Apple’s sexy new, razor thin ultraportable by noting that as far as was concerned, “using this laptop is what living in the future feels like” and that “I’ll definitely buy one, because this computer will get you laid.”

He’s not an exception: I’ve turned more Windows-loving heads with the new MacBook Air than any other laptop I’ve ever owned. It looks like makers of Windows PCs have noticed the same thing, because Acer, Asus and Lenovo are all set to ape the MacBook Air’s incredible design.

An increasing number of families love their iPad so much, they buy a second Apple tablet, rather than share. That’s the conclusion of a survey finding 17 percent of iPad owners have more than one of the popular Apple tablets in their home.

“The main reason for owning more than one tablet in the household is due to other family members using the tablet,” according to YouGov. While more than a third (37 percent) of tablet owners responding to the survey say their partner uses an iPad, 14 percent say they purchased another iPad because their kids are using one.

One of the reasons why modern Mac laptops are able to attain such great graphics performance while maintaining excellent battery life is because Apple switched over to NVIDIA chipsets that marry their own superior mobile GPUs with Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors.

Unfortunately, Apple’s reliance on NVIDIA chipsets is also the reason why Mac laptops didn’t jump to the new Core i series of Intel CPUs last year, as Intel has been fighting it out with NVIDIA in court, trying to push the graphics maker out of the Intel-compatible chipset business.

Looks like they were successful. NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says that his company will be permanently exiting the chipset business to focus on SoCs (or systems on a chip).

Proving that home electronics are driving that gift-laden 2010 sleigh, the iPad is credited with a sales spike this holiday season.

Comscore reports that computer hardware is the top growing category for the 2010 holiday season to date with a 25-percent increase over last year. Shoppers snapping up handheld devices (such as Apple iPads and e-readers) and laptop computers account for much of the growth.

The one-size-fits-all ease of electronic gifts were also behind the record numbers for e-spending: $27.46 billion was spent online, a 12-percent increase over the same days last year. Free Shipping Day also proved appealing, merchants throwing that in increased sales by 61-percent over the same day last year.

The run up to the festive holiday is great news for the App Store – closing for submissions over Christmas means developers are working hard to ensure that their applications are approved and ready for purchase before Apple closes the doors. As a result, a torrent of applications have been surging in to the App Store over the past week, and to help you separate the good from the bad, here’s our list of must-have apps released over the past week.

The fascinating Guinness World Records book is now available as an interactive iPad application. Records come to life with full-screen video and full-color photography, and you can even attempt to beat exclusive world records on your device.

Friends is a new social networking application for the iPhone that lets you keep up with your friends, family, and colleagues from 4 social networks. With support for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, it’s easy to stay in touch without the need to open up different applications – it’s all here, in one place.

Screens is a VNC client for all of your iOS devices that makes accessing your computer from anywhere incredibly easy. It’s simple to set up and is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux computers, through both Wi-Fi and 3G.

Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have iOS apps – including Type It!, Puffin, and more – after the break!

The run up to the festive holiday is great news for iOS gamers – with the App Store closed for submissions over Christmas, developers are working hard to ensure that their applications are approved and ready for purchase before Apple closes the doors. This means that a torrent of games have been surging in to the App Store over the past week, and to help you separate the good from the bad, here’s our list of must-have games released over the past week.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has been a huge hit on games consoles for many months now, and thanks to EA, first-person shooter fans can now enjoy this awesome title on their iPhones. It features classic Battlefield warfare with intense single-player missions and online multiplayer that’s guaranteed to keep you entertained this Christmas.

Teaser trailers and screenshots for Real Racing 2 have been popping up all over the place in the past few weeks, and Real Racing fans have been very much looking forward to the game’s release. Firemint’s second Real Racing title features officially licensed cars for the first time, multiple exciting game modes, and claims to be the most exhilarating racing experience on a handheld device.

N.O.V.A. 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to one of Gameloft’s most exciting games for iOS. The ultimate sci-fi first-person shooter returns, boasting improved A.I., better online multiplayer, a larger range of weapons, and a whole lot more. If you’re a fan of the first N.O.V.A., you won’t be disappointed.

Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have iOS games – including Sega’s Altered Beast and EA’s Ultimate Mortal Kombat – after the break!

In the immortal spirit of Nigel Tufnel, our 2010 Year in Review of the best in Audio gear and apps for Mac and iOS devices goes to 11.

If you missed any of these or didn’t get a chance to check them out for some reason or another, don’t fret — they each should be around to help you discover dulcet tones and make sound memories for a long time to come.

11. iDJ – iPad Music App ($9.99)

iDJ’s music management system is a simple, streamlined way to quickly build club-quality playlists using the music in your iTunes library. With patented BPM detection technology, iDJ fuses your music together with the finesse of a professional mixmaster. As you add songs, iDJ analyzes their sonic-waveforms, calculates tempos, and then automatically performs optimal transitions throughout the playlist. Playlists can contain an unlimited number of songs and iDJ supports audio in WAV, MP3, and AAC formats. Plus, your iDJ library can be managed through iTunes. iDJ is the first true music-mixing application for iPad that both beginners and professionals can enjoy.

Not to continue to pimp our own Infinity Bladeelegiac masterpiece.

Interestingly, though, it turns out that Infinity Blade — a game that seems like it would be impossible to pull off on any other console — was not designed for iOS to begin with.

In fact, as Chair co-founder Donald Mustard makes clear in a recent interview, it wasn’t designed for an iPhone or iPad… it was designed for the great gaming device that Apple missed out on: Kinect.

Thursday was a big day in insider trading busts, as four new arrests were made by the Securities and Exchange Commission cracking down on insider trading.

One of those arrests, though, is particularly interesting to Apple enthusiasts: Walter Shimoon, an executive for Flextronics (an Apple supplier), was one of those busted on Thursday, and as it turns out, one of his violations was to pass on information about both an iPhone update and the iPad before they were official.

Way out, man. That might encapsulate the Thursday remarks by a Research In Motion executive on whether the Waterloo, Ontario-based company’s upcoming PlayBook can compete with Apple’s iPad. “I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do,” RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in what some members of the media termed “a several minute rant”.

The tablet market will move away from “a proprietary SDK and unnecessary apps,” Balsillie said in response to a question from JP Morgan analyst Rod Hall. The comment, aimed at Apple, was RIM’s latest attack on the Cupertino, Calif. company’s grip on the nascent tablet market.