iOS 4.2 is likely to be released sometime this week, unifying the iPhone and iPad into one operating system while simultaneously bringing AirPrint, AirPlay and more to all devices. For iPad owners, it’s a particularly exciting update, since it brings many of the features (most obviously multitasking) that iPhone owners have been taking for granted since iOS 4.0.

The Gold Master Seed has gone out to developers, so it’s imminent, but when exactly is iOS 4.2 coming to us regular joes and janes? It’s unknown, but there’s a couple of good guesses: either November 9th or November 12th.

The November 9th date comes via Inside-Handy, which says that Apple told Deutsche Telekom (aka T-Mobile in Germany) of the release date.

On the other hand, the November 12th release comes from reports that Apple will be pushing some carrier updates in Europe on November 12th.

In all honesty, both these dates are pretty suspect, but considering the fact that Apple is probably going to release iOS 4.2 and iTunes 10.1 this week, there’s a good chance one of them will be right… at least as a fluke.

The Solid State Drive, or SSD, appears to be the future of Apple devices, including the recently updated MacBook Air. Toshiba, the maker of the SSD in the razor-thin MBA is making the Blade X-gale series more widely available. The drives – just around 2.2mm thick – are available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB configurations to resellers and bulk purchasers.

“Delivering a product that enables superior user experience in a smaller footprint is the ultimate goal,” said Scott Nelson, vice president, Memory Business Unit, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. A denser memory module permits the smaller size, Nelson explained.

Skyfire Web Browser is a full-featured web browser and the first application for iOS that converts Adobe Flash videos in to HTML5, allowing you to play them on your iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s been incredibly popular in its first week and has rocketed to the top of the paid chart in the App Store. It’s also one of our favorite apps for iOS this week.

Also on our list of must-haves is iDJ – an application from Numark that makes it simple to create seamless, synchronized playlists using you iTunes music library on your iPad. iDJ’s patented technology allows you to assemble customized soundtracks to accompany and enhance every occasion.

AppSwitch is another great app that deserves a place in our favorites this week. It has been described as “the missing app that should have been in the box,” and allows you to monitor all apps and processes running on your iOS device so you’ll always know what’s running in the background.

Check out our full list of iOS must-haves after the break!

Small, portable, expensive and hard to trace. A young police officer in Samoa must have been thinking the same things most that most iPod thieves think when he devised a plan to get his hands on Apple’s portable music player.

And evidently that “gotta-have-it” impulse was strong enough not only to push him to cross the line between law enforcer and law breaker — but to plan a break-in to get the iPod from the office of the head of state.

23-year-old police officer Aumua Marcus Hunt first pleaded not guilty to one charge of theft, but then copped to stealing the iPod from the government office.

One of the App Store’s must-have games this week is Floop – a highly entertaining physics-based puzzler in which you shoot acorns in to the mouth of a squirrel. It sounds easy, but you’ll need to practice your skill and accuracy to complete each level.

NBA Elite 11 by EA Sports is also a Cult of Mac favorite this week, and it’s also the only true 5-on-5 NBA game for iOS. Delivering authentic basketball action with graphics made to maximize your device’s Retina display, and EA’s trademark impressive gameplay.

Revolt is a dual-stick 3D shooter that boasts advanced, fast-paced gameplay, sharp 3D graphics, and killer music & sound effects – also on our list and guaranteed to blow the socks off any shoot ’em up fan!

A study conducted at the USC Marshall School of Business found that attachment to brands like the iPod “can even be strong enough to induce separation anxiety when… replaced” by another brand, according to the university’s press release.

To test their hypothesis, researchers used three completely different consumer products, and one of them was the Apple iPod. Attachment to some brands can be so strong that “consumers are willing to sacrifice time, money, energy and reputation to maintain their attachment to that brand.”

The researchers determined that “the greater the attachment, the greater sacrifices a consumer will make to connect with or remain connected to the brand.”

Comment of the week comes from reader Flash Man regarding the story that Adobe’s Flash kills battery life. Writes Flash Mac:

A new study also indicates that using web and desktop applications will significantly decrease battery life. In fact, in a stunning series of tests soon to be released, scientists have determined that simply running the computer would decrease the battery by up to 50X compared to keeping it in the ‘off’ or ‘standby’ mode. Scientists are looking for solutions to this problem. One five year old girl suggested plugging in some kind of ‘charging device’ to combat this threat. Fanboys quickly dismissed the idea as too simple and instead suggested purchasing multiple Macbooks and having an elaborate series of spares available at all times. Additionally, Apple suggests purchasing an AppleTV and an iPhone to make end users feel better.

Last month, it was widely reported that Apple had reached yet another milestone with its App Store by chalking up it’s 300,000th app. The only problem with that number? It wasn’t true: while there were 300,000 apps in the App Store, a lot of those apps were inactive, meaning Apple hadn’t quite crossed the threshold for their milestone.

Still, time heals all, and now, Apple has actually racked up its 300,000th real app thanks to the average of 5,452 iPad apps and 12,218 iPhone apps uploaded each month.

If you’re a network administrator in love with the svelte, stackable design of Apple’s Xserve line, you’d better stock up: Apple has announced that they will be discontinuing the Xserve line starting January 31st, 2011.

With an effete wave of his hand, Steve Jobs could have you and everyone you cared about bludgeoned to death in the night by turtleneck-wearing goons armed with iPhone-stuffed socks, but that’s not enough to make him crack the top ten in Forbes’ list of most powerful people on the planet.

Nonetheless, the strongly spoken Apple CEO has managed to go up quite a few notches on the list, buoyed by Apple’s successes in the mobile arena. He climbed from the 57th spot last year to number 17 this year.